Infinite Diversities: Book One
by Gentleman Bystander
Summary: First in a series of overlapping stories, this tale follows everyone's favorite inter-species couple in a very very VERY AU setting where the Eugenics War went decidely different and first contact was much earlier.
1. Chapter 1

**Legal Disclaimer**

Star Trek and all characters, creations, organization, and locations pertaining there-to are the exclusive property of Viacom, CBS, and Paramount. Use of said characters, creations, organizations, and locations fall under the aegis of the Fair Use Clause and are neither intended nor unintentional generating profit or revenue for the Author.

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><p><strong>Author Disclaimer<strong>

Typically I would have opted for a M (Mature) rating for this story, but given that it is perhaps more tame in all regards save sexuality than my other work I have decided to experiement with a T (Teen) rating. The story contains contextual and thematic elements that may not be suitable to all audiences. This book is set in a science fiction universe but covers matters of human interactions and relationships that may not be acceptable to all readers. Language and graphic descriptions of violence are common and if this type of writing disturbs you or is unsuitable for viewing by you or your child(ren)/spouse(s)/dependent(s), please do not open this work. This work is replete with refrences and allusions to romantic relationship and human sexuality as part of the natural process of human socialization and may contain strong sexual content and descriptions there-of. Refrences to suicide, drug use, alcoholism, religion, and politics are also contained here-in. If any of these subject matters are offensive or inappropriate to either yourself or your child(ren)/spouse(s)/dependent(s) please do not view my work as I will not be held responsible for posting material you may view as inappropriate after you elected to open and read it. **If for any reason you find the material in this story beyond what should be allowable to a T rated story, please contact me and I will revert the rating to the original M.**

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><p><strong>Setting Disclaimer<strong>

Events in this story occur in a mirror universe where the Eugenics war took a decidely different turn, lasting into the 2020s and the Third World war never occured. First contact with the Vulcans also occured before the original canonical date.

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><p><strong>Viewing Disclaimer<strong>

This is the last one...I promise. This work is best viewed at 1/2 justification. You know, those goofy little links at the top right corner of the page opposite the genre/title link bar. Seriously...I mean it, this definetly reads better at 1/2, but don't let me force you.

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><p>Fingers curled into the fabric of a sleeve, an act her antediluvian foremothers had done since before the time of logic and reason, when Vulcan slew Vulcan and they made war with a savagery that made the conflicts of human-kind, which her kind so adamantly decried, seem tame and civil. It was to the logic tempered Surak-ian mind a cry, a desperate scream, no less shocking to a Vulcan than it would have been for her to scream his name, in front of everyone and anyone on the ship, would be to a human.<p>

She didn't look up, instead feeling the eyes of her human mate fall on her. He towered over her, seeming even more impossibly big now that usual, something about being under the gaze was comforting, it felt like a deep cave to find refuge in against a sand fire storm. She felt the bunched muscle underneath, felt it tense as he pulled his arm away, teasingly. The grey fabric slipped her fingers, despite the strength of her grip, she couldn't match these recombined humans. She darted her eyes upward, noting the pleased, or rather, bemused smile on his face. Humans had not suffered the numbing effects of rigid suppression of emotions, as a result their faces were still remarkably emotive, capable of a vast range of voluntary and involuntary expressions. It added an another layer of communication to their spoken language. Based on her observations, in some situations language barriers between humans could be overcome by the utilization of facial expressions and other bodily gestures. Interestingly, the complex stratification within human emotive response ran far deeper than the simple muscular alignment of features, to borrow their phrase the eyes could "tell the story." The subtle clues of eye position, pupil dilation, and angle of focus could change the nature and meaning of a facial expression diametrically. The fact that many humans seemed to be capable of extrapolating these clues without the benefit of pheromone cues or extensive training was still something of a marvel to her. His eyes were saying something entirely different, she couldn't quite discern the meaning, but she felt her blood quicken as a result.

Humans had somehow managed to take the lessons of their so-called Eugenics war into logical account and rather than allowing the events to almost destroy their race, they chose to allow it to improve them. During the brutal fighting, seeking to offset the advantages the flawed augments who started the war in the early days of their 21st century, an alliance of Earth governments began genetically modifying military volunteers with advanced genetic retro-viruses. The end result were what effectively amounted to super-soldiers without the ingrained moral relativism and superiority complex that affected the first augments. These Genetically Recombined Augmentees, as they were called, would help crush and then overthrow the augments. Initial fears had almost led to the destruction of the GRAs until it was discovered that their genetic alternation had not resulted in a psychological change. There had been no conquest, no enslavement, no purging of the inferior or genocide, the GRAs simply returned to their lives as soldiers or as some had to civilian life, retired, had families, and, eventually, died. Later the method was used to adjust certain issues that had plagued humanity and created a more solid, hearty, and physically exceptional species. Tempered by questions of ethics the ruling parties of Earth introduced new changes gradually, sneaking the retro-viruses into the air and water supply, seeking to eliminate defects from the genome. However there were additional concerns, when population growth spiked at 3.4% in 2056 it became necessary for measures to be taken to ensure overpopulation didn't become an issue. Mandatory "screenings" became the norm wherein individuals would have their sexual organs mildly irradiated to retard the chance of conception. This had, of course, produced outrage and another alternative had to be developed, humans had to begin a Diaspora from Earth, into space.

Her mate was an 8th generation system 5 Genetically Recombined Augmentee, a human whose genome had been carefully sculpted over generations of treatment and further developed upon at the time of his commission. His father had been a 7th generation system 5, and combined with the widespread modifications among civilian populaces in North America, he had been born with Augmentee level genetics, the additional modifications upon beginning his commission had just served to further boost his physiological solidity. At 1.9 meters he seemed to dwarf her, and she had discovered later on that his physical strength was easily a match for her own despite her race's physical superiority to base-line semi-augmented humans. His build lent itself more to that of a MCS Marine than an engineer, a fact he often flippantly dismissed by claiming engineers needed an abundance of strength and stamina in the course of their occupation. As chief engineer on the first earth Warp 7.5 cruiser, he was an integral part of the absolute vanguard of Military Command Starfleet's armed forces.

"Can I help ya with somethin', Sub-commander."

She found his vocal patterns pleasing, the inflections and corruption of pronunciation of his own language further reinforcing the varied and dynamic nature of his race. Prior to the fateful first encounter between his race and hers in 2041, her people had eschewed the idea of military might as anything other than a necessity for continued existence. The humans had seemed to embrace militarism in a different light; the concept of warrior ambassadors whereby their military bodies acted as representatives of good will as well as harbingers of destruction. When the Vulcan High Command had expressed doubt and reservation about the militarism inherent in Earth's forays into intergalactic travel and exploration they had quelled the misgivings by pointing out that the expectation that all extant races would welcome humans in a spirit of cooperation and mutual interest would be folly.

In order to preserve its interests humanity had to offer an open hand, but enclosed in an armored glove that could, if necessary, turn into a fist. "Si vis pacem parabellum," if you want peace prepare for war, an ancient human maxim that MCS embraced with fervor. It had been a hotly debated issue until the compromise that created Military Assistance Command - Vulcan had been formed and implemented. The bellicose nature of the soldiers sent as part of the first exchange program had at first alarmed many Vulcans until they came to realize the personable and cooperative nature of the professional warriors. In a decided reversal of expectations, humans had volunteered information and design schematics to their Vulcan allies rather than attempting to keep their unusually advanced technology secret. This had, of course, made the High Commands agenda of quiet espionage unnecessary, and had, almost, made her initial mission as a de facto spy pointless.

Early raids against human extra-system shipping had borne out the legitimacy of human concerns. Attacks by extant species who were prone to acts of piracy had necessitated the inclusion of military personnel on their simple freighters and early results had shown that their efficacy in either defusing or prosecuting conflict was commendable. When MCS had expressed concern over Vulcan's capacity to adequately defend itself, the High Command had balked, almost infuriated in spite of the emotional reserve inherent in her race. A series of exercises had quickly served to silence High Command's protests as the humans illustrated their tactical and strategic superiority in spite of their less advanced technological level at the time. After 25 years of enjoying the added security of MAC-V's presence, the High Command had decided it was time for further integration and cooperation between their two races.

Human advances in technology had occurred at a startling rate, in less than 40 years they had transitioned from primitive and rudimentary Warp 1 freighters to their current generation of warp 7.5 warships. CGX-01 Enterprise was the first of 12 such ships being produced, and as such was the joint armored fist and open hand of human policy. Her stationing to the ship had been a coup for Vulcan, they had realized the logical advantage of deepening their almost lop-sided friendship with Earth. She had seen the comparison made in Earth's media that the relationship was like that of the quietly friendly hulking brute, in this case earth, and the wise but weaker genius, Vulcan. The assertion had seemed offensive until the Klingon Empire had launched its first military foray into their combined space in 2147. Military Command Starfleet handed the alliance of several warrior houses a devastating defeat as Federation destroyer groups and marine battalions dealt the Klingon forces defeat after defeat. Vulcan High Command had been initially stunned by the ferocity with which MCS Marine forces fought the ground battles, completely halting Klingon infantry actions and wiping out the contingent forces. Even more startling was how measured the response was and the ease with which the victorious MCS troops would cease actions, allowing the Klingons to leave the battlefield rather than being slaughtered outright. The fighting had culminated in the Klingon attempt to use Andorian Colonists as hostages as leverage to keep their remaining main-force ground elements from being destroyed by besieging MCS forces. Starfleet had calmly pulled back the Marines, contacted the Klingon forces and issued an ultimatum; surrender and we will let you evacuate the planet and return to your space, if any harm befalls the colonists the Starfleet forces would orbitally bombard the Klingon main-force. The initial confusion and worry this had caused the hostage takers allowed MCS to insert special forces teams that reduced the hostage takers and save the Andorians.

Her mate had been there, earlier in his career as part of the MCS Marine Brigade Landing Teams. One of the first in to ensure that Klingon mines and obstructions in shuttle landing zones were cleared and later coordinating the construction and operation of fire bases, molecular transport stations, and landing signal systems. Despite the tame nature of the latter, his status as one of the first "boots" on the ground meant he had faced the withering fire of Klingon infantry assaults. It was perhaps this dangerous duty that had given him a great appreciation of his current status as Enterprise's chief engineer, maintaining the pride-of-the-fleet Warp 7.5 engine and the complex battery of phased energy cannons and rail guns. During that particular conflict he had sustained a number of wounds from Klingon bat'leths, one in particular to his back during a position over-run following a landing action had resulted in persistent pain as the scar tissue would become inflamed. The injury had plagued him for years often resulting in weeks of virtually sleepless nights, it was during their first tour of duty together that she had introduced him to Vulcan Neuro-pressure as a way to assist his sleep cycle and had, consequently, sowed the first seeds of their intimacy. For all his martial pedigree, he was first and foremost a lover of science and mechanics, preferring the confines of engineering to the weapon and combat training armories in the ship.

"Two wall sections in my quarters appear to be improperly secured or mounted." She coyly replied in her concise Vulcan manner, it was not a total misrepresentation. The seams of those two particular sections did not match the others in her quarters which seemed to suggest some level of deviation during their installation.

"A'right, I'll be sure to get Kelby on that." His eyes momentarily flicked as if reviewing her facial features to determine if she was perpetuating a fictional complaint for some ulterior motive; clearly suspecting she was, he let a bare hint of a smile, a human "tell".

"It would be more agreeable, if possible, that the issue be dealt with expeditiously."

"Unfortunately, sub-commander, neither Kelby nor the regular engineerin' staff are 'vailable to remedy that particular issue right now." He spoke in a manner that was almost teasing, as if challenging her to make up an excuse to get him into her quarters.

"Do your current duties prevent you from addressing the matter?" She knew they didn't, put into dry dock as they were for retrofits. He was technically on leave, but devotion to his craft and his family's current status as vacationing on Risa gave him very little reason to leave the ship.

"No, I don't 'spose there's anythin' so urgent that I can't fix whatever problem your experiencin' at the moment."

"Very well, I will escort you." She almost lilted the words, an embarrassment that could have been compounded if one of the retrofit crews had been in the vicinity.

"That ain't necessary, sub-commander." There was a glint in his eyes, he was going to play the part as long as possible. The nature of their relationship had yet to be revealed to either the crew or their superiors, however they had reason to believe the MCS Admiralty board and the High Council was at least partially aware.

"I must insist. If you were to become injured during the process of the repair, you might become incapacitated and unable to seek aid for injuries." Pressing the issue as she was, she of course realized that it was highly unlikely he could hurt or incapacitate himself, not for something so rudimentary.

"There's a very low chance that I'll find m'self in that situation, Sub-commander."

"I would be remiss if I did not ensure that your safety is not compromised, as a senior officer and representative of the Vulcan High Command, it is my obligation." She was relatively certain he would see through the bluff easily, but MCS was strict about protocol, especially about the behavior of its officers and enlisted personnel when dealing with what they called "foreign nationals". This had been her primary deterrent from seeking a relationship with him in the beginning despite her profound curiosity about him from the point of their first meeting. Most of the MCS naval and marine personnel she had contact with previously were almost painfully professional, even by Vulcan standards. He, on the other hand, had been boisterous and energetic while still maintaining the patina of martial strictness. Their neuro-pressure sessions had served to wipe away much of the pretense, she began to see him for who he was, the fact he was so different mentally and emotionally from the warrior-engineer he presented himself as intrigued and excited her.

"A'right, Sub-commander, lead th' way."

If not for Enterprises role as flagship of Task Force: Saber during the Xindi crisis and the necessity that she, as part of it, inject gradually increasing doses of Trellium-D in order to build a tolerance and avoid the maddening effect it had on Vulcans she likely never would have been able to adequately open up to him and, consequently, form the mate bond. She had sealed the relationship by taking the unprecedented step of declaring a Kal-if-fee in his stead when her betrothed Koss had insisted on the completion of their mate bond after they returned victorious from Xindi space. When informed of her decision the human had responded with apprehension, noting that MCS protocol forbade him from interfering with the cultural practices of another species. She consequently contacted MAC-V inquiring as to whether special stipulation or permission could be acquired. Days passed as Starfleet deliberated over the issue before finally issuing a statement saying that his participation in an "unprovoked" incident of aggression against a foreign national resulting in "serious injury or death" would result in a Court Martial. He had taken that, correctly, to mean he would have to simply defeat Koss without maiming him and that the duel would have to be fomented by another individual, he could not instigate it, himself.

The memory of the fight still caused a twinge of primal excitement in her, her chosen mate had acquitted himself as his genetic superiority and profession had dictated. Koss had been defeated soundly, and the human had been forced to talk his Vulcan opponent out of continuing to fight where he was so clearly outmatched. The fact that he had refused to kill Koss had brought the matter to scholars to determine if the victory was legitimate, the realization that she had already formed a mate bond with the human prompted them to quickly declare in the Starfleet Officer's favor and put the matter to rest. Illogically the scholars had deigned to not mention the fact that she was already bonded to the human through an act of passion, still it was a mercy not just to her sense of decorum but also to her family's standing. Koss had been less decorous, going as far as to forget his emotional restraint and began insulting the human, perhaps intending to foment a genuine battle to the death. Still her mate, warrior diplomat that he was, had tried to assuage the blow to Koss' pride by informing him that she was a highly emotional creature and that his logic would chafe under her emotions and vice versa. This had embarrassed her more than a little at the time, but that was quickly overridden by the overwhelming relief and measured joy over the willingness of Vulcan cultural law to consider him her rightful mate, and his willingness to fight for the right to be considered such. He had been willing, his brutal efficiency and unswerving ferocity in prosecuting the attack to establish dominance and a swift victory had been indication enough to her of his desire to be hers and she, his.

Of course they had been forced to maintain the illusion that no such relationship existed, a highly informal inquiry on the part of MCS had determined that the relationship could be considered fraternization and was not appropriate given her status as an observer on the ship. Pragmatically, however, MCS had determined that they constituted a sign of the future in Earth/Vulcan relations and the end result was that they would have to conduct themselves in a professional manner at all times when serving together. A fact that had, at times, strained the relationship. Being so close to one another but unable to act in a manner that conformed to human standards of the romantic or matrimonial relationship had worn on him profoundly. At all times she felt a deep sense of affection coming from him specifically in relation to her, at other times she found herself accosted by his mental pornography, thinking of her in ways that caused her sympathetic twinges of desire until they found themselves mentally coupled without the benefit of the physical release. In his control of what was truly an uncontrollable longing for her, she had found herself deeply in love with the human. His lack of pre-condition, his willingness to accept the burden of seeing but never touching despite his comparatively short life-span was something that pleased her.

Before reaching her quarters the ship's intercom began broadcasting the first notes of "Retreat" the recording made from some ancient human brass instrument. The Engineer placed his right foot over the left, spinning smartly 180 degrees to face the bow of the ship, snapping his right hand upwards to his brow, fingers pressed firmly against one another, the back of his hand facing outwards. Two of the retrofit crew walking down the same corridor stopped, hands clasped behind their backs, as civilian contractors they were not required to accord the same honors, but did so out of tradition, respect, and a strange form of pride. He held the human salute through the 29 second playing of "Retreat" which was followed by the recorded sound of an pre-warp ballistic cannon firing a charge. He held the rigid human salute as the tinny sound of "To the colors" played for another 42 seconds. It was just one of the strange and purposeless customs that many Vulcans had found strange about the MCS. The worshipful reverence over the symbol of a flag seemed illogical as anything other than a method of forcing discipline in its members. But humans tended to display seemingly confusing reverence for objects and ideas that seemed contradictory to their nature. This was best exemplified by witnessing a sporting event where thousands of humans had stood, hand over their heart a song that served as the Earth anthem called "Simple Gifts" was played. The race often seemed to display bizarre and inappropriate emotional reactions to such rudimentary stimuli; tears, cries of delight, cheers, and applause over a tonally simple piece of music.

Humans did indeed seem to love their music; it ran the gamut from loud and brash to soft and subdued. Of course MAC-V had introduced Vulcan to some of the more colorful martial customs of Earth. After the Klingon Invasion, the victory tour of Vulcan had included a battalion of MCS Marines marching through Shi'kahr had featured a brass band playing a military march named "Semper Fidelis" whose name had been taken from an antediluvian human tongue. Many Vulcans had marveled at the seemingly unconscious tight order with which the three hundred-odd humans marched, moving in perfect unison, at a barked order all snapping their upper bodies partially right to salute the High Command still in full stride as the jaunt continued to play on brass, percussion, and woodwind. In comparison to the course Klingons and classicist Cardasians, both cultures with great martial emphasis, humans seemed strange and novel despite their equally strong militarist streak.

When "To The Colors" ended he turned back to nod to her, indicating they should proceed. The retrofit crew similarly turned and continued on their way. To the privacy minded Vulcan this was a relief, she had not wanted them to witness the Starfleet Commander, her mate, entering the quarters. Reaching the door she punched in her lock code and the door opened. She entered and felt him follow a step behind. She turned to face him, expecting an immediate act of physical affection only to have him stand their stolidly. She waited, her mind probing at his for motivation or reaction, she sensed bemusement and little else. There was a twinge of jealousy, immediately projecting a memory of his personal quarters that were a fraction of the size of hers. Being a representative of the Vulcan High Command she was accorded an ambassadorial suite where-as his spartan accommodations consisted of little more than the bare minimum of accoutrements necessary for an MCS officer. Based on her rare visits to his quarters she was relatively certain she had been in closets that were more spacious. His sole comfort in his quarters was the fact he was not forced to "hot rack" like the enlisted crew, nor was he required to deal with a bunk-mate as most junior officers were assigned to two bunk quarters. This was a small mercy for her as well as she was relatively certain that if he cried out and possible called her name during their rare moments of mental intimacy as she did, it would have other members of the crew seriously questioning what exactly their connection was.

"Well, where's th' problem?" He smiled almost in spite of himself, sensing her mild agitation.

"Trip...?" It was more than a little exasperated.

"You brought me down here t'fix'a problem, I'll be damned if I walk outta here without fixin' it." He grinned, then faked military seriousness, "You're not givin' me false repair gigs, are ya, sub-commander?"

She rolled her eyes, "There is indeed an issue with the wall panels." She marched across the room, extending a finger to the location of the poorly fitted panels.

He ran a hand down the abnormally raised panel edge and nodded to himself. "Looks like th'bolts coulda got cross-threaded durin' installation, don't know how this managed t'pass muster." He pulled an electric socket wrench from his hip pocket, inserting a spline drive and quickly removing the mounting bolts, holding each between his lips. Lifting the panel free his head immediately recoiled away from the exposed interior wall section. He made some sound of dissatisfaction, reaching up to pull the bolts from where they rested between his pursed lips and shoving them in his pocket. He looked carefully at the heavy armor plate that formed the wall, using his thumb to measure the distance between the threaded holes used to attach wall paneling.

"Yep, its lookin' like they misaligned th' hole. Looks ugly, but doesn't much affect stability of th' bulkhead."

"Approximately how long will it take to repair?" She inquired, brushing his mind again searching for the response she desired.

"Bout five minutes'r so."

"How long to ensure it is very thoroughly repaired?"

"Bout five-" he stopped mid sentence, "Why, sub-commander T'pol, did ya' bring me down here on false pretenses?" She sensed his mischievousness.

"Very...thoroughly." She intoned again.

"I'm on duty, ya' know."

"No, you are not." T'pol countered succinctly. "I overlooked ensign Sato distributing the R and R notifications; you are, by order of Military Command Starfleet, on leave for the next one hundred and twenty hours."

Tucker scrunched his brow, "I must've missed that message."

She arched her brows. It was clear he hadn't been aware, but she found herself more than a little confused as to how he could assume that everyone else on the ship had shore leave but him.

"I didn't have to put in a leave request?"

"Apparently not."

"Well, guessin' I'd better find somethin' to do with m'self for the next five days." His mind gave no hints as to whether he was being coy or not. She decided to assume that he was given his oft rather indirect sense of humor and his propensity for teasing.

"I have some suggestions in that regard." She projected her desire to further develop on their mate bond to his mind without reservation.

"Darlin' if you start gettin' frisky now I'm not gonna be able t'get through 'nother eighteen month tour without layin' a finger on ya."

"Based on some of your thought patterns, I am not entirely certain how you do so now." T'pol rebuttaled archly.

"Ya really don't wanna know how that works..." His mind betrayed him no sooner than he had said it.

The mental impression of Trip in the broom closet sized combination shower, latrine, and wash room; hot water flowing over him, taking in ragged breaths, heart pounding, left hand braced against the wall as he manipulated himself vigorously with the right to mental images of her, recollections and snatches of memory about her smell, her taste, her feel. A vivid picture in his mind of her face, the expressions she made during intimacy. All the minutia of their first coupling, recounted with startling accuracy elicited an immediate blush. As she flushed a slightly green tint she found herself at once mildly disgusted by the act but also strangely flattered, at times she found it strange and appalling the lack of sexual restraint among humans and their inexorable and near-constant drive to mate, even simulating the act for the purpose of biological gratification, yet the fact he only thought of her during the act caused a strange feeling of pride and self-confidence, emotions she oft tried to suppress. But given humans' rather mercurial sexual nature, it filled her with a sense of ease. Of course she also didn't mind the residual self-image his mind had fabricated of his body sculpted by generations of genetic manipulation glistening under the shower head.

"An...intriguing solution that may ultimately be unnecessary." T'pol commented, still blushing a verdant shade.

"How's that?" Trip found himself inadvertently aroused, perhaps by dint to her reaction to his accidental revelation about his self-regulatory masturbation.

"I have notified High Command that I wish to transfer my service to Military Command Starfleet active duty." She assumed the revelation would please him but sensed a glut of apprehension and misgiving.

"If you do that, they're gonna send you to another boat, lickity split!"

"No, they will not. There are political ramifications in separating us."

"Darlin' I'm justa dumb hick from Florida, I don't have a clue what you're talkin' 'bout."

She found the assertion amusing, his files indicated a measured intelligence quotient of 148. His placement on the Enterprise had been the result of proficiency, adaptability, and intellect, not just a random or "lucky" assignment as he sometimes maintained. Admittedly she did find him prone to some degree of social ineptitude, there was something almost delightfully awkward about his time spent with her on Vulcan. His capacity to read-the-mood with his fellow humans had led him into a number of situations dominated by uncomfortable silences and tripping over his own words as he tried desperately to determine if he had said something to offend a calmly staring Vulcan.

"Are you aware that we are the first recorded mated human and Vulcan couple? It places us in a rather unique legal and cultural position."

"That may be, but I signed a contract and swore a oath that said I have'ta uphold the Uniformed Services Ethics standard. Section fifteen, article eleven, states specifically that I'm forbidden to engage in conduct unbefittin' an Officer of Military Command Starfleet whereas it pertains to subordinate personnel or foreign nationals, in this case foreign nationals bein' you. " He recited the line from memory, mentally considering the way MCS had effectively given him a pass in regards to Kal-if-fee months before.

He had not been privy to the legal ramifications and considerations that had prompted the rather unorthodox interpretation of protocol that had allowed the events of that week on Vulcan to slip through the cracks without so much as whispers of an Article 15. He had been more than a bit confused and curious as to what had transpired, what had prompted MCS to allow for what was, effectively, a gross breach of his oath of enlistment and Vulcan High Command to allow for what bordered on repudiation of their cultural rites and practices. He knew T'pol knew what had transpired, but she kept it locked away and all he could ever sense in regard to those events was that it was something she would never reveal to him.

"And if we were to legally bonded according to earth custom?" She relished the shock the question caused in him. Occulted reactions, a mixture of confusion, joy, and fear swirling into a homogenous mixture that felt like the rendered essence of emotion so neatly packaged with the human sensibility that prevented it from taking on an imminently genocidal quality. To be certain she felt that he wanted to be her mate under both their systems, but felt pause over uncertainty about what such a union would imply. She wanted to reach out to his mind and provide the calm and comfort of her reason but she was, similarly, unsure what she could expect. There was some small comfort in the fact that both MCS and the High Command had, for years now, been trying to deepen their alliance. Neither side, of course, knew what concession to make and felt that inquiring after such would be deemed in poor taste. A marriage of their races symbolically through the marriage of individuals would serve to help bridge the divide. Sadly she was not due to enter pon farr for another three years as she theorized hybrid offspring would serve to further bridge the gap. She also found herself irrationally curious about what traits would be exhibited by a human-Vulcan mixed child. He began to smile at her, the expression creeping onto his face, starting on the left cheek and moving with glacial inexorability to the right.

"How's three sound?" He asked, his expression sending too many signals for her to adequately categorize and interpret them all.

"Three?"

"Babies..." His voice was soft, barely above a whisper, tenuous and delicate, bedroom words.

Her reaction was to go wide eyed, she wasn't aware she had projected the idea at all, she was relatively certain she hadn't, yet somehow he had latched onto it. She felt waves of feelings batten her from his mind, seeming to throw her back as each struck, broke, and receded away, the blow threatening to throw her off her feet, the retreat threatening to take her feet out from under her. She suddenly was finding it hard to breath, harder to concentrate, harder to keep the feelings that always pushed against her resolve like a rain swelled reservoir trying to breach the dam of her logical resolve. With each lash of his mind, she took a deeper breath, trying to force oxygen to her brain which seemed to cry out against the drowning death of logic failure. Each step he took closer, she felt her resolve failing. All the sensations of desire, love, passion, excitement, and fear were pushing her beyond her standard threshold of perception, aware only of her own embers of longing tasting the dry tinder of her instinctive mind and blazing anew. Her face burned with a heat she couldn't understand, flushed green and desiring the relative cool of his lips to help slake the fire. Another step closer to her and just one step away from her losing all composure.

"Trip...I will not..." She was almost sobbing each word, choking back her feelings of lust, fingers now digging into the chest of his uniform, wanting to pull it away. "I will not be able...to conceive...for three more years."

"I know darlin', it doesn't matter a bit t'me. I just...it would be the best thing in my life if I could spend the rest of it with you." His hand gently caressed the inferno in her left cheek, his words still soft, emotionally they seemed a proxy for cold logic, in their own right their tone incited neither emotion nor did they seem to promote it, yet still... "And three lil ones, two girls and a boy, or two boys and a girl, or whatever it may be, however it may be. And I know you want it too."

"Three pon farr cycles, will take...twenty one years to complete." She was craning her neck now, standing on her toes, trying to reach the lips that would either kill this thing in her or set it free. "Is it worth it to you, to wait that long?"

The waves of emotion abruptly changed from tempest to calm, no hint of reservation or doubt, it was just as if a storm tossed sea was suddenly replaced with a morning lake. The sensation soothed, quenching the uncontrollable passions and leaving her with a feeling of contentment and benign languor.

"As long as it takes." Smiling, and then a quick peck on the lips was his reply to her affectionate yet desperate pawing which had, even now, settled as the raging flame had been snuffed into to a smoking ember. The distinctly human mixture of affection, patience, and gentle teasing left her feeling loved, such blithe simplicity. Logic, however, had yet to correctly erect the barriers against her emotionality and she began to feel a little cheated. She wanted the catharsis of sex, the calming and satiating effect, the mild embarrassment after the fact that helped quell the urge for at least a short time. She could feel the longing in him, and felt herself surprised at how quickly he had set it aside as he, even know, was heading back to the wall panels.

"Trip!"

"Gotta fix the panels, darlin'."

"You have left me..." she sighed reluctant to say the words but knowing it was the best description, "hot and bothered. I would find satiating the urge for sexual relations, agreeable."

He turned his head back, affecting what was at once a devilish and sheepish grin, pointing at the wall in feigned innocence. "Panels..."

"Then you shall engage in your husbandly duties to me after you fix the panels." It was more of a statement than a question.

"No, after that I'm gonna be checkin' out some new manuverin' vernier algorithms for the type fifty one torpedos."

"In most species the idea of refusing sex is highly illogical."

"Well, your always sayin' that humans are illogical." He winked.

"Trip." She found the word was more of a protest than a pet-name when she used it.

When he turned this time his face was no longer playful, but painfully, deadly serious. "Look, ya' think I don't wanna normal functional relationship? Ya think I don't go t'bed every night wishin' you were in it with me? It's hard as hell, darlin' but it's just what I gotta deal with. And if I thought for a second that you were wantin' me as bad as I'm wantin' you, I think I'd just lose it. In five days we get under way again, and we might be out six months we might be out sixteen, and in that time we're not gonna' be able to share more than'a few minutes together, just th'two of us and a whole lot a time in between to think about it. And of course if ya join up with Starfleet, you'll end up under the same Uniformed Services Ethics code and in one of those lockers and we won't even be able to do the Neuro-pressure."

"We could always both get ourselves demoted to junior officers and get assigned to dual quarters." She arched a brow, almost teasingly.

This has elicited a smile, "Judgin' by how frisky ya get, we'd end up dead or paralyzed after one night in a room that small."

T'pol once again took on a slightly pistachio shade, not so much out of the impropriety of the comment as the truth lying there-in. Still, from the stand-point of trying to improve and solidify the relations between their respective peoples, they would have to become the prototypical "happy" interspecies couple. Theirs would have to be a joy and closeness that would illustrate Earth and Vulcans peoples and allies that they were strong through their differences and the fundamental elements of sentience could bind them together. She would have to find a way to sway the politics, it was not just logic at stake, it was her relationship with the human she loved as well.

"Trip, is it not customary to occasionally take one's wife for a 'night on the town'?"

"Well, darlin', we're married under Vulcan law, not sure if the same dynamic applies."

"Then would it not also be considered customary to take one's...fiancé, for a night on the town?" She had been forced to find the human word, their betrothal customs were so much more unwieldy by comparison.

"Point taken, had any ideas, darlin'?"

She let a Vulcan smile slip, which was to say a faint movement of her lips and eyes, "Anywhere, but here."

He chuckled, "Alright soon-to-be Mrs. Tucker...I 'spose those verniers can wait til t'morraw"

**[! Author's Note !] I know that Naval/Marine Flag protocol is "Retreat" followed by "Carry On" but I always was fond of "To the Colors" and its my story...at least I think it is.**


	2. Chapter 2

**[! Author's Note !] If you find this intolerably boring, please note that this chapter is pure character study, which often enough tends to be boring unless you create a suitably whacky situation, a skill I, regrettably, do not possess.**

His initial estimation of the time necessary to complete the repair of the wall panels had been startlingly accurate. She had found that among most humans "about five minutes" could range from approximately two minutes thirty seconds at the low end to as many as twelve minutes. He managed the correction of the problem in exactly four minutes thirty eight seconds, a fact she was aware of because she had timed him for the express purpose of using it as a possible verbal goad, a thing humans affectionately referred to as "teasing". Erring twenty two seconds on the side of increased punctuality had hardly seemed like a vice in this situation, but she had decided to apply the verbal goad in a rather mild form so she could elicit a reaction from him. Among humans this was often categorized as sexual tension, an area she found herself frequently at a disadvantage in, but found the strange dynamic somehow agreeable.

"Your projected time table was incorrect, there is a twenty two second discrepancy."

"Not a chance, I always come in under the wire with repairs!" He defiantly refuted.

"And indeed you did, you finished the maintenance twenty two seconds ahead of schedule, I hope you will limit the premature completion of activities to matters of an engineering nature." Her research into human social dynamics seemed to indicate that human males were specifically susceptible to verbal goading of a sexual nature, though she wasn't entirely sure he would properly construe her statement as such.

And indeed he had, "Stamina is best reserved for things that don't require power tools and mounting hardware, darlin'."

She arched a brow, immediately detecting what could be viewed as a double entendre moments before he realized what he had said and further realized that she had realized what he had, or rather hadn't, said.

"What I mean is...stamina is best...well...damn, I'm just diggin' this hole deeper, aren't I?"

"You can stop any time." was her wry riposte.

His mouth went ajar as if to offer further opine, but quickly shut, lips drawn tight as he left a snuffling sigh through flared nostrils. Regaining a bit of composure or, perhaps, bowing to his defeat in this verbal exchange he offered conciliatory words. "So, you wanted to grab some dinner?"

"I believe my exact words were 'a night on the town' if my understanding of the English vernacular is correct."

"Yeah, that sounds about right...any preferences?"

She cocked her brow again, "I believe my prerequisite was 'anywhere but here'."

"Okay, well...Frisco is an option, first battalion third marines are down at Pendleton on maneuvers and seventh MEU is en route to the _Degüello_ on the Klingon border, so around MCS Headquarters things should be pretty quiet."

"Regardless, the chance that we will be seen together is heightened." She all but summarily dismissed the option.

"True, but how are two colleagues grabbin' a bite to eat and maybe going to take in a show out of the ordinary? Besides, a Vulcan and a human together is goin' to draw a lot more attention elsewhere."

"What if I wish to be physically affectionate? Surely that would be more compromising in a place like San Francisco."

"I'm pretty sure you can keep it in check for one night, darlin'. And don't call me Shirley."

She opened her mouth to protest about what he perceived to be a mis-nomenclature on her part but caught the grin on his face, realizing that it was his turn to do the teasing. Logically speaking, it would be in their best interest to avoid any signs that their relationship was that of anything more than colleagues. If he could suppress any desire for public physicality it should be well within her capacity to do the same, however she wasn't entirely sure that it was best for their relationship. Humans could be notoriously territorial in regards to objects of affection or individuals with whom they were romantically involved and though she had never seen anything to corroborate the claim, there was rumors that Vulcans could similarly be violently territorial in regards to their mates, especially when distance necessitated that one or the other find another partner to slake the Plak-tow. Some scientific reports speculated based on "evidence" that the next shared Pon farr would frequently take on a jealous and sometimes violent tone as the partners allowed their recriminations to punctuate their emotional venting.

Emotional venting, as if there had not been enough of that during the Xindi campaign. When the first attack probe was intercepted and destroyed over Earth seconds into the attack the races of the Xindi had been convinced that humans had indeed posed an imminent threat. Task Forces Saber, Lancer, and Zouave encountered overwhelming resistance. By the end of the campaign 2 destroyers and a frigate had been scuttled and 60% of the remaining ships had been forced back to friendly space including the Cruisers _Indignation_ and _Avenger_. Things had taken a turn for the worst the closer they drew to the sphere's construction sight, and with the effects of the Trellium she had begun to lose control. Meditation had failed, only the relaxation from the neuro-pressure treatments seemed to help. As much as they had clashed in the past, Trip had been sublimely compassionate and understanding. He applied what he learned from her treatment of his pain related insomnia to great effect. He comforted her during her breakdowns, holding her gently until the storms of emotion passed and her composure returned. It wasn't long before the treatments took on a unique tenderness that evolved into passion. He had also patiently put up with her fits of emotionality about Captain Archer that had contained elements of worshipful admiration that bordered on unrequited love. She didn't even realize how fully he was a part of her until events took place that forced her out of her malaise over Archer. Her territoriality had finally manifested when MCS Marine Corporal Amanda Cole began making rather obvious overtures at Tucker. It was then she realized that it was Trip that she loved not Archer, and she chose to act on it.

Contemplating she decided that perhaps she could continue the teasing as a disarming technique to determine why he was so dead-set on going to San Francisco to the exclusion of any other location on a planet that was teeming with cities and local culture. Being needlessly contrarian was illogical, but in being so it would help reveal more about her mate that expected her to always behave in a logical fashion. Admittedly this was, perhaps, not the best situation to be performing these kind of experiments but there was something oddly satisfying at watching him get flustered.

"What if I do not wish to keep it in check? 'Shirley' you can understand that dynamic."

He pushed his tongue into the fold of his left cheek, mouth slightly ajar, jaw protruding and eyes narrowed, affecting an expression of deep ire but unable to keep the slowly spreading smile on his face.

"Alright, you wanna play it that way, fine by me missy. I know of some places that'll blow your socks off. Problem is, once we get down there, there isn't going to be a transporter or shuttle pods to fall-back too." He took on an almost scolding tone, implying the all-or-nothing commitment of venturing outside the comfort-zone.

"I believe I will find that arrangement agreeable."

"Alright, then you're goin' to have to follow my orders, word for word. Understand?"

"I believe I can accomplish that."

"No arguin', you're goin' to have to treat everything I say as an executive order. You got me?"

"I understand the imperative."

"Alright, change into something comfortable, and meet me in the Transporter room at eighteen twelve."

She arched a brow, "My present clothing is not acceptable?"

"We can't be in uniform, there is a good chance that the second they see a human and a Vulcan on the town like we're gonna be, it'll be on every media feed and news broadcast on the planet in about an hour. At least if we're not in Uniform we might be harder to identify."

She probed at him mentally, trying to ascertain exactly what he had in mind, all she could sense was a strange lack of inhibition, a kind of wild abandon that felt frighteningly precarious. It was like standing at the edge of a cliff, peering down into unknown darkness below. The thought alarmed her, she had no idea what he had in mind and there was no logical deduction based on his body language and expression. He was either doing a fantastic job at masking his thoughts or all he was thinking about was some sort of dark misadventure.

He could sense her brushing his thoughts, probing at what must have been to her an indefinite set of plans, and her mind seemed to recoil in muted horror at the place he had concealed his outline of events for the impending evening. He wasn't sure how she felt it, it could have been perceived by her as a dark place or a void, or perhaps an impossibly bright light. The sensation of her skirting along the edges of the thought's event horizon was hard to put his finger on, it was indescribable somewhere between a feeling and a strangely disconnected mental awareness. Still she was dauntlessly circling, probing, trying to determine what exactly he had in store for the two of them, each time she tried to step in she would be rebuffed by her own apprehension and misgiving. It was almost amusing to watch the dichotomy; almost morbid curiosity yet a system of logic that considered the idea of curiosity for its own sake anathema. He mentally cackled, she was making this entertaining.

He landed an open-handed pop firmly on her backside, she jerked and stared at him wide eyed, her face seeming to go through a series of micro-contortions as she tried to deduce both his motive for the act that could be construed as either violence, punishment, or affection and, from the likely reason, what would be the appropriate response.

"Hop to it, darlin'. Transporter room in thirty minutes."

* * *

><p>She had rather surreptitiously probed his thoughts as he changed in his quarters, trying to discern what would be appropriate clothing for his planned outing. His first course of action, however, had been to turn on the shower in the small privy adjoining his quarters and stripping off his uniform. She felt more than saw the thin cotton fabric of a button down shirt and the well worn dichotomy of texture, both rough and soft, his favorite pair of jeans. So they would be going somewhere warm, or at least temperate by human standards. It might be cool by the standards of a Vulcan, but there was a degree of calculation in dressing inappropriately on her part. She knew that if she grew cold he would attempt to warm her, and for the touch telepathy of her race, some physical contact would serve to deepen the bond. As it was, her chosen attire was unorthodox by standards of Vulcan sensibility. She wanted to see his reaction, experience his subtle discomfort when he realized he was staring too long. It was part of what made humans delightful, their inability to truly suppress their emotions meant that they could be read easily. Even if the words leaving their mouths were lies, their expressions often bore out the truth.<p>

"Darlin' you might get a little chilly in that." was all he had managed.

The top was a rather short cinnibar colored satin piece she would normally have worn as night wear. Its short sleeves and exposed midriff left her feeling a sense of vulnerability and exposure, coupled with the floral patterned sarong in muted shades of cinnamon and cream she was embracing an almost plak-tow inspired sensibility about her garb.

"I assume we are going someplace warm for the evening."

"Well, yeah, we are." He was trying not to stare, almost predictably.

"Florida?"

"Georgia, actually. Figured we'd head down to Savannah. It's a colorful town right on the coast, just slightly inland from all the barrier islands."

"I was led to believe that as close as the southern Atlantic coast was to the tropic of cancer, it would result in warmer temperatures."

"Well, yeah...the low country in June can be downright unfriendly what with the heat and humidity, but I know you can manage to catch a chill if it's in the seventies. Just don't want ya' to get uncomfortable."

Another opportunity to challenge, "Does my attire make you uncomfortable?"

"Better question is, will it make you uncomfortable?"

"I do not believe I would have dressed this way if it would." Her expression was bemused.

"So it's not just for my benefit?" he arched a brow, his expression utterly stony otherwise.

"Commander Tucker, the world doesn't revolve around you."

He could read it like it had been painted in ten foot tall letters, the almost imperceptible upward movement the corners of her mouth took; a Vulcan grin. There were times when he felt like she was going to test him to destruction. As long as she could feel his mind and he could feel hers, she knew exactly how far she could push without sending him over the edge. Maybe she just wanted him to open up to her to the same extent she had inadvertently opened up to him. The idea that he would be the strong one in the relationship seemed almost ludicrous. Humans were supposed to be mercurial and subject to uncontrolled passions and mood swings, at least that was what Vulcans in general kept insisting was the case. He, of course, thought he had more discipline in his military tempered mind than many of them did. He wasn't sure what exactly she was looking for though, what kind of feelings and actions she wanted from him. She was damn good looking though, very pleasant to the eyes. The narrow waist, slender arms, the slight bronze color of her skin; smooth and stretched taught over that petite figure. Even with their higher body density she weighed maybe 58 kilos soaking wet. He had 25 centimeters and 33 kilos on her and, owing to his recombinant DNA, was easily as strong as any Vulcan. Of course she had found out about the latter the hard way when he had been forced to physically restrain her during some of her more violent private emotional breakdowns during the Xindi campaign.

"Touché. I suppose if you get too cold we can always head over to Hunter and get ourselves beamed back up."

"Do you find my attire agreeable?"

"Does that really matter?"

"Part of the human dynamic was to present your partner with an aesthetically pleasing combination of grooming and dress."

"Darlin' you don't have to try to do anything like that."

"Perhaps I just wish to reinforce the image that you are the 'luckiest guy ' in the room."

His eyebrows shot upwards again, that strange, almost condescending grin once again tracking across his face. She felt subtle wisps of thought radiating from him, ghosting along the edges of her consciousness.

"Why...Sub-Commander T'pol...it sounds to me like you've gotten cocky."

Her eyes went wide, her expression protesting as his thoughts once again whipped around her teasingly, seeing what she had said from his perspective it did sound conceited. Within, under the layers of soft-mocking was another realization; he didn't want some idealized version of T'pol, he wanted T'pol as she was, without a varnish of human pretense. There were notes of jealousy and defensiveness, a strange outward aggression laying coolly stifled until which juncture it could be stoked into a violent flame. Her default response was to consider it a very human reaction, until she realized she had felt the same way about him at one point. His actions had served to calm that particular form of aggressive emotionality, but conversely she had done little to reassure him.

"Should I go change?" She asked softly.

"Nah, its fine darlin'. But you don't have to prove anything or show off for me." He paused, thinking to himself, _I like you just fine like you are_. "Let's just have a good time, alright?"

* * *

><p>One of the major failings of MCS was the degree to which he could abuse his security clearance to bypass normal procedure. Military Command Starfleet Marine Air Station Beaufort served as an embarkation and debarkation hub for MCSMRS Parris Island and had full transporter and shuttle facilities. It had not taken much effort to convince the officers on duty that T'pol was a cultural attaché from Vulcan High Command and secured them a place in a shuttle for a short hop over to Hunter Air Field in Savannah. Marine Support shuttle pilots had to log hours anyway, so their rather impromptu space available inclusion into the rather pedestrian flight over had required little more than presentation of credentials indicating he was senior engineer for the vaunted Task Force: Saber's flagship. Of course T'pol had gotten more than a few stares, the claim that she was a cultural attaché hadn't been questioned; she had the ears, the eyebrows and the stolidly expressionless face that had convinced them that she was indeed Vulcan. But with that in account they seemed more than willing to enjoy the view anyway. It had been the same thing the entire trip, from Beaufort to Hunter, then from Hunter to historic old Savannah via the Chatham Area Transit trams, everyone had their eyes on the Vulcan. It wasn't curious staring or looks; it had a decidedly base element to it. Licentious lascivious glances, flickering snatches of muted xenophobia, overt stares riddled with boorish contempt for propriety.<p>

His thoughts were a smattering of compulsion-emotions; hints of paranoia, excitement, anticipation and what she had initially thought was jealousy. It turned out the jealous compulsion was a defensive impulse with a hidden ribbon of violence running through it. He felt a need to protect or insulate her from a culture she was unaccustomed too and that he was finding himself almost irrationally incensed with. She found it touching and amusing at the same time; she had not attempted to ward him from the culture shock he had experienced on Vulcan. Despite his best attempts he had immediately run afoul of what he had construed as her mother's disapproval. T'Les was Vulcan through and through and suppressed her emotions with what was usually utter calm. Her reserved and flat manner often seemed taciturn almost to the point of being abrasive. He had come to see her later during the trip, before the Kal-if-fee was to take place and had apologized for making the situation so uncomfortable, specifically citing T'Les's apparent dislike for him. When she had confronted her mother about her treatment of Trip she had replied with a stony face that she had found him quite agreeable and pleasant from the moment he had given her the ta'al. She had further startled T'Pol by commenting that he was a fine choice for a mate and she wished him safety and victory in the Kal-if-fee.

Again her memories turned to the passion battle. It had actually been ridiculously passionless despite the origin of the rite. Koss had not been in Pon-farr when the duel was proposed and occurred and Trip approached the fight in almost a casually routine fashion. He clearly had believed that Koss hadn't stood a chance against him which he, indeed, had not. Trip was a sixth of a meter taller and had a much more impressive physique, coupled with his augmentee granted ultra high muscle density he was easily stronger than Koss despite the higher physical capacity of Vulcans. His pristine face did not hint at the fact he was battle hardened, but with his tunic removed the mek'leth and bat'leth scars seemed to indicate otherwise. Koss had inquired in a disarming manner whether he was accustomed to losing such fights. Trip had replied with equally disarming candor that Klingons tended to like over running forward operation bases. Koss retorted by questioning what an engineer did in such a situation to which the human replied, "Put 'em down fast and hard." Despite his unspoken order to neither kill nor maim his opponent, Trip had managed to break his Vulcan opponents nose, dislocate his left arm, crack his jaw and pop a tendon in his right leg. Koss' proficiency in Suus Mahna which would have normally given him an advantage had left him no match for the MCS MCMAP training Trip had undergone in preparation for his tenure as a Marine Brigade Landing Team engineer.

"We're here, T'Pol." He interrupted her reverie. His normal endearing parlance had been dropped, likely for the sake of propriety and a desire to preserve her Vulcan sensibility's love of privacy. She was, however, not here as a Vulcan seeking cultural exchange, she was here, this evening, as his mate and his sensibilities would take primacy this evening. She hooked an arm through his, resting her head against his shoulder as they stepped from the tram. The act elicited some hushed sounds of surprise; a Vulcan being affectionate. To be certain most of the people in the tram had probably never seen or met a Vulcan, but almost without a doubt they had heard about their behavior. She felt a hint of doubt radiate from him, no thought-conscious words were present but she could almost sense him asking _Is this okay with you?_ She looked up to see the muted concern on his face, she closed her eyes a moment and projected feelings back to him, hoping he would understand the feeling.

_Yes._

He smiled, just barely, looking down at her as she opened her eyes as they began to descend from the elevated tram platform. The smells of this place intrigued her. The sharp pungency of brine carrying the sharp odor of salt marsh and ocean water wafting up from unseen water. The heat-sweat of Oak trees, the now cooling sun baked brick and stone of ancient buildings refurbished and maintained with almost religious devotion despite the inefficiency of doing so. Chopped grass and facility-purified water splashing against time worn marble drifting from the squares and parks that sat like partially-living cenotaphs amid the strangely orderly blocks of architectural antiquity. All of this drifting between the intermittent deluges of human smells; pungent and sweet, subtle and strong, earthen and artificial.

Imperceptible strokes of cool breeze beguiled her exposed skin from the heat and humidity that was left in the wake of Sol's slow track west across the sky. There was something heady and intoxicating about it, a strangely exotic feel in the dichotomy of tropical and deciduous, antediluvian and vibrant. This city was dynamic, mysterious, subtly frightening in a way that excited her. Something about this place felt like a knife poised at her throat at the same moment a velvet gloved hand stroked the place where the blade would draw tenderly. Maybe it was his feelings being projected, some desire to push her boundaries to see what he could take her, what he could release in her. He was going to slowly draw the emotions from her, gently, like a shaman drawing the poisons from a wound. She took a deep breath, finding calm and resolve, not wanting to lose control to soon but rather wanting the slowly building agony that was so indistinguishable from ecstasy for a Vulcan.

He led the way as if familiar with the area, strange as he had never mentioned the location before, yet there was a strange almost intimacy with the way he stepped from concrete to asphalt to brick as he led the two of them through the little parks amid the bustle that somehow seemed strangely languid. They continued onward, the warmth of his arm providing a sense of security she wasn't able to fully reconcile. Perhaps this is what the mate bond was meant to instill in Vulcans. For a hot natured people, logic was meant to cool and sedate; the warmth of a mate, a partner in life with whom you would share your weakness and be completely vulnerable with served to keep the chill from stifling them completely. It painted the Pon-farr in a different color, almost a different medium altogether; child birth was just a side effect, even with the chill of logic in place Vulcans would breed if population numbers became taxed, mating provided warmth.

Contemplating this she was unaware as they approached a small establishment, occulted into the side of an ancient building, its door standing open with a strange familiarity that welcomed strangers as old friends and made one an integral part of the extended family that was implied by patronage. The pair ascended a few steps of stone to cross the threshold to uncharacteristic linoleum. The exchange of welcomes at the door between greeter and Trip was made with her oblivious to the act. He approached a wood topped table, roughly a meter across. She instinctively released his arm, moving to the side opposite him meeting his face, waiting for some explanation or indication of what he expected of her.

"No arguin' right?"

"I will comply with whatever suggested action within reason."

"That's good enough."

A waitress approached, "Welcome, what can I get y'all?" She was exuberant, but seemed to experience a moment of halting uncertainty when she spied T'Pol's ears.

"You have a Chenin Blanc in house?" Trip inquired.

"Ummm...one sec." She turned her head back to the bar, "Chenin Blanc?"

From behind the bar a male voice replied, "Yeah, we got that."

The waitress nodded.

"A glass of Chenin for the lady here and a bourbon, straight up."

"Comin' right up!"

T'Pol looked at her mate with a confusion only borne out by the subtle tilt of her head.

"Trust me, darlin'." He said in a low tone.

She felt uncertainty from him, but also a sense of beguilement. It was a strange feeling, almost as if he was uncertain how much latitude he had with her, to what degree she was willing to submit to his intentions as gentle as they may be. She suspected that he would not expect anything outrageous or dangerous of her, but at the same time he wasn't sure how open she was willing to be. Part of the mate bond was submission, each submitting to the other. She tried to project her willingness to submit to him, not sure how much he would understand through the bond. She instead just decided to project feelings of warmth and comfort, upon doing so she saw his face visibly relax.

When the stem ware was placed in front of her she just elevated her brows at her mate who thanks the waitress and provided appropriate reassurance that they did not, at the moment, require anything else. He lifted the squat glass of bourbon, gesturing that she should lift her own glass. She complied, remembering his directive. Seemingly satisfied with this he rolled the lowball glass, clutched along the inside edge of his thumb with middle finger proving additional support, letting the scents of the liquor drift up into his nose. She copied the act, holding the stem of the glass delicately. Her brain immediately identified the ethanol hydrocarbons which she chose to disregard in favor of the other scents she found much more appealing. Further analysis required tasting and she did so with almost scientific eagerness. The bouquet was suddenly enhanced with flavors of plum, tangy hints of pear, and soothing vanilla notes. The ginger amount of liquid she had sipped seemed to coat the tip of her tongue, it was agreeable; she let it roll back down her tongue to kiss against the soft palette then down her throat. She felt the alcohol tease her nose, and then the soft warmth as blood vessels in her esophagus dilated ever so slightly. When it hit her stomach she felt an immediate warmth begin to radiate out through her body, it was delightful. When something threatened to tear away the confines of logic, it was usually sudden and violent to the mind, alcohol however tended to beguile and softly melt it away. It was because of this Vulcans almost feared it.

She gasped barely above a breath, eye lids heavy as the blissful sensory input bathed her softly. It wasn't even audible, but she could already feel his muted concern as his eyes caressed her.

"It's no rush, darlin'. Drink it slowly."

It was strangely enjoyable watching her close her eyes, her upper lip delicately latching on the rim of the glass, slowly drawing in a measure of the translucent pale-gold liquid. When she lowered the glass he saw the slight roll of muscles in her throat as she swallowed, her eyes drifted back open and she looked at him that way that made muscles flutter and resolve crash. Through the bond he could almost feel her concerns evaporate and her world became the two of them standing in the small pub to the exclusion of everything else. Knowing her as well as he did, he could pick up the subtle verdant wash to her skin, still all her thoughts as he could sense them in the bond were tranquil, the buds of emotion were slowly melting the logic rather than burning it away. She still had control, he could feel that, but she was in a position to where she could opt how much of it she wanted to exert over her emotions.

"Pardon me, I don't mean to intrude..." Trip looked left to see a bookish older man, holding a pint glass still partially filled with beer. He looked like an academic, corduroy jacket wire-rimmed glasses and copy of Faulkner's _A Fable_ under his arm. He looked over, waiting to see what the intruder would say but noticed he had his full attention directed on T'Pol.

"Please forgive me if I seem rude but, ma'am...are you Vulcan?"

T'Pol lowered her glass to the table, "That is correct."

"I see." He turned his face back to Trip. "Young man, are you aware that Vulcan's are incapable of drinking alcohol? You are being a horrible representative for our species and criminally insensitive, are you trying to kill her?"

"Sir, I'm pretty sure the Sub-Commander has a far more intimate understanding of the tolerances and physiology of Vulcans than you or I." Trip was attempting to defuse the confrontation diplomatically as was more-or-less demanded by MCS protocol.

"Your understanding of Vulcan physiology is fairly _intimate_ as well, Commander." T'Pol commented taking another sip of the wine. She was rewarded with seeing his jaw drop open, muscles still working to form words without a sound coming out. His expression was at once betrayed and amused, she smiled back with her eyes, this had been an agreeable turn of events as far as she was concerned. The lack of inhibition felt refreshing, still, she should probably do something to further defuse the situation.

"Vulcans do not consume alcohol as a matter of cultural preference, not a biological mandate." T'Pol explained curtly. "Alcohol lowers our inhibitions and allows more primal instincts to come to the fore. As such our people eschew anything that lessens our control and clouds our logic."

The man guffawed, "Which is precisely why this young man is giving our species a bad name."

"I am seeking to have my inhibitions lessened and logic clouded." She replied in a clipped manner, sipping the wine again and looking at her mate in a way that made it feel like she was practically undressing him, "Ideally I intend to engage him in sexual congress before the end of the night."

Trip stared at her mystified for a moment, then felt her projection of thoughts and feeling leaving him to stifle a grin, turning his head up and away to avoid eye contact, he was blushing slightly. T'Pol was delighted by the reaction, humans sometimes termed any action that was intentionally disruptive or distracting as "stirring the pot", at the moment she was stirring the pot and found the dynamic gratifying.

The elderly man was flustered, T'Pol's rather blunt revelation about the nature of their relationship, at least in as far as sexual matter were concerned had thrown the academic. His only practical recourse was to just turn his head and glare at Tucker, "Commander huh? I thought MCS would have trained you better. Your blasted military is always complicating human relations with other races."

T'Pol could feel Trip's reserve, cold discipline quelling the fire of anger building in his brain, spreading down his neck and through his shoulders, running down his arm into a clenched fist. Something about the academic's words cut him deeply, and she could feel the rage seething in him. Even if he contained it, didn't let it boil over, it threatened to ruin his night...their night.

"I would find it far more decorous and respectful as a representative of your species if you would desist verbally accosting my mate." T'Pol said icily.

This had gotten the older man's attention, his head snapped back to the beautiful Vulcan, "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"This man," She nodded to Trip, "is my mate. He is familiar with the courtship and bonding rituals and practices of my people; I am not, however, familiar with the equivalent rituals of his. Our intention was to explore those dynamics this evening until we were rudely interrupted."

Curmudgeonly sputtering came in reply prompting Tucker to draw his face threateningly close to the smaller, older man's. He was radiating pride, appreciation, adoration towards her and focused, contained violence towards the other man. "First off, Zephram Cochrane was a military man, the very fact we have relations with other races is because the military decided to do what academics had been unable to do for year, break the speed of light. And as for what the lady said, in short, was 'stow it and shove off' understand, mister?"

"Bob, that's enough, mind your manners." Their waitress chastised.

From behind the bar, the male voice spoke again, "Leave 'em alone Bob. Its none of your business, just let 'em be."

T'Pol was sensing that the tension that had been established would not be quickly dispelled. Through the bond she could sense Trip's apprehension, the wisps of fancy that were evidence of spontaneity seemed to burn off under the heat of anger and a small element of self-hatred. He was blaming himself for what had happened, blaming himself for creating a situation where she had been forced to expose her private life in front of total strangers. He leaned part way across the table, "I'm sorry, darlin'. Let's get out of here."

She gave an acquiescing nod, then drained the remainder of the wine glass, closing her eyes which visibly fluttered under the lids as the logic numbing effects of the alcohol overtook her. When she opened her eyes her mate was looking at her with a combination of amusement and muted concern overriding the expression of suppressed rage he had worn moments before. She let out another muted gasp as she felt the warmth radiate through her body. "Shall we?"

"Let me pay the tab first." He replied, approaching the bar and conversing with the barkeep. He kept his voice low, it would be inaudible to most humans by dint of her Vulcan hearing she heard every word.

"Sorry 'bout Bob, he can get...uppity."

"It's not your fault. Who is he anyway?" Her mate replied.

"Professor over at one of the universities, sociology or somethin' like that."

She saw Trip shake his head, "Put a bottle of water on the tab too."

"Total comes to twenty two creds."

"Can I put a tip on that or do I need to leave it on the table?"

"We can do it here."

"Alright, put me down for twenty eight total." He produced a card from a pocket which the barkeep slotted.

"Sorry again, don't let this keep ya' from comin' back."

As they left the pub, Trip handed T'Pol the bottle of water. She looked at it inquisitively then back to the human. Her face seemed neutral but her mind was wondering what the purpose of the water was. He seemed to sense her thoughts and replied to quell the confusion.

"You're not used to alcohol, so drink the water to help flush your system, it'll lessen any negative effects. The greatest secret to successful drinking is to remain hydrated." He let out a chuckle, "You can trust me on this one, I've got tons of experience."

"I enjoyed the wine, what was it called?" She hooked her right arm back through his left.

"Chenin Blanc, I figured it would be right up your alley."

"I should acquire some for the captain's table."

"Oh no...we're gonna limit your intake, darlin' it doesn't take much to get you talkin' about matters that are inappropriate. " He chuckled, "Drink your water."

"We will have to tell them eventually."

"Maybe..."

"If I become pregnant as a result of the Plak-tow it will become rather obvious, will it not?"

"I figured we'd cross that bridge if we came to it."

He was radiating doubt now. His reaction was completely different about the prospect of children from the feelings he had projected just a little over two hours ago. This was human, the self doubt they often crippled themselves with. It, more than any other trait, allowed them to alienate and distance others. The inward turned aggression, doubt, and anger often served to explode outwards catastrophically, and the catalyst could often be something as ridiculously simple as the encounter at the pub. The real issue was that the doubt was evidently vis-á-vis his relationship with her specifically. Love, infatuation, passion; more than anything else they served to ruin human males. It was the lens by which all their insecurities could be exposed and magnified and while she found the vulnerability pleasing, she did not want to see her mate self-destruct.

"Do you no longer desire to have offspring with me?"

"Doesn't really matter, if we did have kids I'd probably have half the folks on Earth and Vulcan telling me how horrible a person I am for ruining your cultural purity or something."

She stepped around in front of him, stopping them both dead in their tracks. She looked him in the eyes, understanding she must kill those seeds of doubt before they took root and began to grow unabated. "It does not matter what they think. You are my mate, I chose you and you won me through the Kal-if-fee, as long as you live I will never take or desire another."

There was more than a little tension being projected by both, it clashed at its edges swirling together like storm fronts colliding, threatening to become a tempest. T'Pol realized this was, again, her turn to help dissolve the fears and apprehension in her younger human mate. The degree to which he was wired for confidence was limited and almost universally did not involve his romance with her. Part of her believed if he had focused his domineering martial and technical expertise into his relationships, she would not have found him so intriguing. She opened the bottle of water, keeping her eyes locked with his took a sip then lowered it again.

"I'm drinking my water."

He couldn't help but grin again, feeling from her mind as much as hearing the teasing in her voice. He reached up and gently traced the edge her left ear with his index finger, he got it; she wasn't going anywhere, damn what the universe may have had to say. He would have to roll with the punches just as she would, endure the stares, the judgment, the insults. It wasn't to dissimilar to what couples had experienced throughout the span of history. If she could be strong enough to face it then so could he. Still, discretion was the better part of valor, a little get-away like this every once in a while was alright, but they couldn't get to into the habit of it. He offered his arm again, and she quickly slid hers into his, stroking the back of his hand gently and they began walking again.

"Do we have a set itinerary?"

"Figured we might walk down to River street, then we can head over to the restaurant for dinner."

"That sounds agreeable."

* * *

><p>The sun had vacated the Coastal Georgia skyline by the time they reached the restaurant. The walk across the coble-stones of River Street had been done in virtual silence, instead they had communicated thoughts and feelings through their bond. It was similarly to communicating across a language barrier, words could not be shared, but the snatches of thought, sensations, and emotions could be projected. It wasn't always clear what a particular projection meant, prompting the other to focus on similar thoughts or feelings until they eventually divined the meaning. The temperature had not significantly cooled with the setting of the sun, leaving T'Pol still quite comfortable in her attire. It had indeed garnered more than a few stares and craned necks. He suppressed the jealous and defensive feelings splendidly given the fact she could feel the almost diaphanous twinges of jealous defensiveness. He didn't want anyone looking at his mate in that way other than himself. She again found the sensations curious and amusing. Of course he had also gotten a few flirtatious side-long glances, forcing her Vulcan territoriality to rear its head as she pulled herself closer into his arm and side, eliciting soft smiles from her mate further prompting her to stare her challenge at potential intruders. She couldn't find the fact that overtures would be made towards him that strange, by standards of human attractiveness he fulfilled a number of criterion usually considered aesthetically, physically or sexually pleasing. Of course, in the interest of propriety he wasn't behaving nearly as aggressively towards the individuals giving her lustful looks as she was being to those who dared eye him.<p>

The exterior of the Restaurant was austere with a LED sign and a red door. There were no windows, and the entrance was down a quintet of steps placing the door just slightly below street level. Pushing open the door they were greeted by a hostess standing behind a deliberately utilitarian avante garde metal podium. She wore a deliberately flowing white blouse with tight, fitted charcoal slacks. Her hair and makeup immaculately kempt, T'Pol immediately realized this was not so much a hole-in-the-wall location that, based on her understanding of Trip, would have been the kind of place he would have enjoyed. The industrial chic decor hinted at its status as den for the young sophisticates and industry insiders of this particular city.

"Welcome to Jazz'd, do you have a reservation?"

"Tucker, party of two."

"Right this way, sir."

They were led to a small square table adorned with a black table cloth and rolled olive green cloth napkins. Trip pulled a chair out for T'Pol, a custom common among humans who still had some lingering elements of gender inequality that demanded males accord additional consideration to females for the sake of being "gentlemen". She sat down and he gently pushed in the chair before taking his seat across from her.

"Your server will be with you momentarily, can we start you off with a drink?" She inquired with what could have been faux deference as she placed menus before them.

"The lady will have an Anjou Martini, gin, no vodka, and a water with lemon. I'll have a bourbon, neat."

"I'll have those drinks right out to you, sir." She sauntered off to the host station, handing off the drink order to a passing server.

"You're goin' to need to drink this a bit slower than the wine, darlin'. It's going to have a bit of a punch to it."

"Is the consumption of alcohol this integral a component of human courtship?"

"It can be, yeah. Usually a 'night on the town' means drinks are part of the equation."

"Interesting. I would suppose the inhibition lowering quality of alcohol would result in a more honest display of character and personality." She arched her brows.

"It can, yes. Sometimes you don't get a real idea of who a person is until you put them in a situation where the pretense flies out the window."

"Is that to say you think I am pretentious?"

"No, you're Vulcan." He gave her a teasing smile.

"If you get enough alcohol in my system, you may find that being Vulcan could be problematic." Her voice held a dangerous edge, but her eyes seemed playful.

"Set phasers to stun...gotcha."

Under the table she ran her sandal-less right foot up and down along the inner edge of his left knee, experiencing a moment of touch telepathy, the sensations and bare-thoughts they had shared before seeming to gain some more focus during the act of the touch. She was his tonight, his possession, his to own and pander too, protect and adore. It was a soothing feeling, a bizarre kind of comfort in the idea of defenselessness as long as her mate was there to ward and worship her. The live band played music punctuated by brass, symbols, snare drums, and a piano. A women was singing in dusky sensuous tones underpinned with a dancing bass line. It was different from the Jazz music she had experienced at Fusion, this almost had a subtly raucous element to it, it was faster, more animated. Tonally it was more organized, well composed, it lacked the chaos of jazz yet there was something even more primal about it but at the same time more musically sophisticated.

"What kind of music is this?"

"Soul...rhythm and blues. Most music of the twentieth and twenty first centuries on earth was influenced by blues music."

"I was led to believe it was jazz that was responsible."

"I dunno what the obsession with jazz is in this century. Jazz was an offshoot of blues that worked its way into urban environments and became the fad of effete socialites. Blues came from bluegrass, the first distinctly American music, and it continued to evolve as time went on. I'd say from about nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty five soul music was about the best there was, for my money, nothing can quite touch it."

"And do you know this song?"

"Its 'Son of a Preacher Man'."

"It is very sensual."

"Well, yeah...that was the idea. They used to call this baby making music."

The pistachio shade once again crept into T'Pol's face and she blinked more quickly, "Should I add it to my data library to be utilized during my next Pon Farr?"

Trip hinted at a smirk, "Do you think we're actually going to be able to concentrate enough to even hear it?"

Her nostrils flared a moment as she sucked in a deep breath through her nose, the green flush creeping down her throat. "I would imagine not."

* * *

><p>"So who do you think the plus one on Commander Tucker's reservation is?" Hoshi queried.<p>

"Maybe Captain Archer." Mayweather postulated.

"Not in a little Tapas place, it's the kind of place you take a date." Malcolm Reed countered.

"Perhaps Corporal Cole then. She has had a bit of an eye for the Commander." Phlox offered.

The four had been enjoying the sights and sounds of Rio de Janiero for the past day when they decided to see if Commander Tucker would like to join them for dinner. He had offered no plans of his own so they had assumed he would be spending his R&R on the _Enterprise_ pouring over engineering projects as was often his habit. When the Officer of the Watch had informed them he was no longer on the ship it had prompted Hoshi to do some digging. His last record on the ship was the log recording him beaming down to Marine Air Station Beaufort, and prior to that a communication log of him making a reservation with Jazz'd in Savannah, Georgia for two. A visit to the coastal city seemed an entertaining prospect as was checking in on their friend. Malcolm Reed made a reservation for the four of them and a sub-orbital hop from Brazil to Savannah had taken a little more than an hour.

The Hostess at her station looked down at her reservation list. "Ah yes, here it is, Reed, party of four. Are you acquainted with Mister Tucker?"

"He's a senior officer on the _Enterprise_, he's one of our superiors." Travis replied in his jovial way.

"Yes, he arrived twenty minutes ago with a young woman, I believe she is Vulcan?"

The four exchanged mildly baffled looks. T'Pol? Reed did a quick reconnoiter noting the sofa lounges off of the main room, and turned back to the Hostess. "Would it be possible to sit in one of the lounges?"

"That shouldn't be a problem. This way please."

They followed, as one moving with an almost surreptitious stealth, hoping they wouldn't be spotted in hopes of observing the Commander and his companion without being spotted themselves. Flanking along the wall they managed to get through the main room without being observed, settling onto the couch Hoshi requested a round of beers. The Hostess left to relay the order to a server leaving the four to conspire and watch.

"Do you see them?" Sato almost whispered.

"Roger that. They're at a table near the stage. Its definitely Sub-Commander T'Pol with him."

"What are they doing?" Hoshi sounded almost giddy.

"See for yourself." Malcolm shook his head slowly in an almost defeated fashion.

As they watched, Tucker lifted a small pepper by its stem from a plate, bringing it to T'Pol's lips who gingerly bit into it. Her mouth opened in surprise at the sensation of the capsaicin, her face and neck showing a noticeable greening, she lifted the wide rimmed stemmed glass to her lips, sipping at the pale yellow-green liquid inside, causing the virdis blush to deepen. To their surprise she placed her right hand on his left, gently, fingers tracing down the back-hand to his fingers. She lowered her head slightly a moment, then raised it again to look into his eyes. He said something and she nodded in reply causing him to once again bring the pepper to her lips as she bit into it again. Her right hand reached further up his arm, digging fingers into the rolled up sleeves then stroking her hands back down to the wrist, once again tightening fingers before letting her phalanges slip down the hand to fingers that arched to meet the tips of hers, if fingers could kiss, make love to one another, it was clear that it would be something like that. Her lips pouted and she looked at him with an expression that could not be interpreted as anything but desire, regardless of species. He lifted a lowball glass to his lips and sipped the amber liquid inside, prompting the Vulcan to lift her wide coned stem-glass to her own lips sipping slowly at the concoction contained there-in. After a moment of silent staring he gestured towards her water glass and she took a long drink from it.

"Are we really witnessing this?" Hoshi asked, almost numbed with shock.

"Yeah, looks like T'Pol is having an appletini." Travis offered with almost boyish innocence.

"That's not what she meant. Besides, its a pear martini." Reed countered in similar benumbed flatness.

"They're in love." Hoshi declared.

"How very peculiar, I know the Sub-Commander cannot be in Pon Farr yet. She shouldn't be due again for another, oh, three years at least." Phlox commented with his patent scientific agitation at something not conforming to categorized facts.

"What's pon farr?" Malcolm inquired.

"It's the Vulcan breeding cycle, it culminates in the Plak Tow which is an insatiable need to engage in or simulate mating with a suitable partner. Her medical records indicated her last cycle was four years ago, the cycle takes seven years so she shouldn't be suffering from the condition yet." Phlox was painfully matter-of-fact, likely detrimentally so as Vulcans tended to hide facts about their mating cycle from non-Vulcans.

"Yeah, that is strange." Sato concurred.

"Mister Mayweather wasn't too far off either, most Vulcans steadfastly refuse to imbibe any alcohol. The fact that T'Pol is having a drink is almost equally unexpected. Alcohol lowers the inhibitions provided by their meditation and logic." Phlox continued.

"You think Trip is trying to slip her a drink to get her off kilter?" Reed inquired, not wanting to think the worst about his friend but not sure how else to interpret it.

"It wouldn't seem so, note the way he indicated she should drink some water. He's trying to ensure she stays hydrated, it will help limit the effects of the alcohol and speed metabolization." The Doctor explained.

"It's kind of great, actually." Travis was all smiles, "Those two have a lot of stress on them. Nice to see they have an outlet in each other."

Hoshi turned back to her seat, suddenly feeling a little guilty in the wake of Mayweather's comment, "Wow, just never thought we'd see that."

"It was my understanding that T'Pol's trip to Vulcan five months ago was to culminate in her marriage to the fellow to whom she was betrothed as a child." Phlox commented, seeming rather perplexed.

"So they're having an affair?" Malcolm was rapidly starting to doubt Trip.

Travis shook his head, "I don't think so, look at them. It's like a honeymoon stage, it was the same on the _Horizon_, the looks, the touching. It's like that, they have to do it when they think nobody is looking."

"Peculiar..." Phlox intoned once again.

"It would explain why he didn't leave the ship when our R and R started." Sato commented.

"And why he went to Vulcan with her after we got back from the expanse." Reed added.

"I believe there is a Vulcan ritual whereby a male can challenge another male for the right to mate with a female." Phlox declared, the puzzle was beginning to fall into place.

They sat in silence as the round of beers were brought to the table. Each contemplating what they had seen, trying to reconcile it through the information they had. It was at once unexpected and the most rational possibility. The two of them had sparred verbally with a vigor and consistency that had only been believable in people who either wanted to rip each other's throats out, or were sleeping with each other. Still, to whisper conspiratoriously in the mess about who might be having sex with whom, and which pairs looked like a possible hot item was one thing, to see it so blatantly was something else entirely. In most situations the rumors were only confirmed after the relationship had ended leaving an awkward distance between the couple in question. This was the kind of scuttlebutt that had legitimate currency on a cruiser like _Enterprise_.

Even though it was right there, it was hard to grasp, there had to be another explanation. Reed still had lingering infatuation with T'Pol, it was not so much that he begrudged Tucker, it was just that he couldn't imagine the relationship as possible. Hoshi had always expected there was a strong rivalry with maybe some elements of heavily quelled but lingering disdain. The sexual tension she sometimes perceived from the two was just another field on which they could spar for supremacy over the other.

"Maybe..." Reed broke in.

"Yeah...it's not what it looks like. They're just close from the Neuro-pressure and meditation." Hoshi finished.

"It's not what it looks like doesn't lead people to slow dance to Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City." Travis grinned widely, taking a sip from the beer glass.

Reed and Hoshi once again looked over to the main room, amid the half dozen couples dancing to the music coming from the live band's guitar, brass, and drum heavy sounds they saw the human holding the Vulcan women close right hand joined to her left, left hand cupping the small of her back as they slowly and rhythmically moved with the tune.

"It would probably be best if we never mentioned this...to anyone." Phlox stated, face scrunched into a squint as he nodded.


	3. Chapter 3

He realized almost instantly that the languid expression was deceptive. Her body may have been supine, but her mind was awash in unsuppressed emotion. Unlike the normal violent lashing of Vulcan emotion, however, this was more like a feeble slap. The alcohol had lowered her defenses, but had not done quite so effective job at unchaining her as the worst-case-scenario would have prescribed. The months of Trellium-D had forced her to learn some effective muting techniques, a form of restraint she could exhibit for the crew that was almost indistinguishable from her coolly logical persona. She had saved all of the suppressed emotion for their time alone. A Neuro-pressure session would start calmly, as they traded off working the nerve clusters, and in no time at all she would have her face buried in his chest sobbing, occasionally leaving him with a fresh bruise as his touch would ignite some ill-defined, poorly directed passion in her. Without the benefit of a mate bond, she could not contextualize tenderness from aggression. A gentle stroke, innocently made, meant to calm and comfort would be confused for a precursor to sexual assault, and she reacted accordingly. A touch that felt so good had to be wrong and inappropriate, logic collided with instinct; if it brought her pleasure it was horrid, it was rape. In response logic would conveniently default on the matter, rather than calmly asking "please do not touch me like that" or trying to explore the sensation, primitive blood rage would be loosed. To his credit, he allowed her the outlet where-in she could vent her rage-colored feelings; allowing her to break herself upon his body, before settling into a weeping wreck in his arms. After the first few incidents he had run out of plausible excuses for his injuries to Phlox, so he had started just suffering through it much as he had injuries during the Klingon Offensive in 47. As time progressed it had developed into the first flickers of romantic desire, and when his touch would ignite the feelings in her, she would reciprocate with touches of her own, tentative exploration of sexuality that amounted to little more than petting and kisses she stole from him as he patiently categorized these new expressions with the violent break-downs of before. Ironically, it had been these very confused forays into the realm of physical affection that had almost pushed him into the arms of Corporal Cole as an outlet for the frustration T'Pol's mixed signals had caused.

In many ways she seemed just like she had durring the worst of the Trellium-D induced episodes. She had clung to him from the time they left Jazz'd, on the CAT tram back to Hunter, through the transporter to the all-but-empty Enterprise and down the hall to her quarters. The heightened touch telepathy they had shared since their moments in the restaurant allowed the sharing of complex thoughts and feelings, unlike the vague and rudimentary colors and impressions that was usually conveyed by their fully conscious minds. Only thoughts of each other had solid distinctiveness, likely a result of links to residual self-image. Now it was her mental pornography that was accosting him, and she seemed to be reveling in it. Vulcan inhibitions were just that, inhibitions; the idea that they were unfeeling emotionless creatures was farcical to the point of being ludicrous, the fact that they tried to maintain the illusion even more so. Her desire for love, affection, tenderness, passion, physicality was easily as strong as any "illogical" being that was governed by emotions. Based on what he could feel from her, if it wasn't for the gifts of Surak, they would never get anything done beyond fucking and fighting, two things they seemed to do to the brink of destruction if their history was an indicator. Their races were a strange dichotomy; humans tended to be instinctively pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness and outwardly emotional, Vulcans were emotional to the point of insanity and outwardly coldly pragmatic. Oh to reach a happy medium...if that ever happened he would be more than willing to retire, move to a home and do nothing but make babies and raise them leaving her to pursue whatever career she desired while he acted as care-taker and home-maker.

This was their battle, their on-again, off-again. Even after they had formed the mate bond they clashed; argued with fervor. It was relatively certain that most of the crew believed that they were inches from calling for "pistols at dawn" at any given point. But this was just the nature of the special tension between them, and they seemed to revel in it to a certain extent. The tension would build to a point where it could only break in one of two ways; the catharsis of love, the romantic make-up or the total dissolution of their relationship. The latter was an impossibility, they would never, could never be free of each other again, even if there had been a desire to cut the tether that always served to pull them back together no matter how hard or fast they spun away from each other. The bond always pulled them back together and regardless of what their overt expressions had been, their occulted desire for unity dashed the pretense to bits. In turbolifts, in the science lab, in narrow access tubes that led to eldritch parts of the ship where machines that science had rendered did the impossible and unexplainable, they would seek the momentary respite of one another's lips and hands, locking together in kisses that left them trembling, gasping, and spent in ways that sex never could. It was his indulgence; the one thing he allowed himself as her mate, he desired much more but understood that duty trumped his most aching needs. If he ever crossed the threshold he had established for himself he knew he would never be able to return, and thus he punished her with an affectionate aloofness.

He was only vaguely aware of her pawing, focused more intently on getting her situated in her room before the combination of alcohol fueled languor and exhaustion or alcohol fueled desire and repressed emotions hit its breaking point. Everything he had done this evening was designed to open her up, to pull the real her up out of the brackish pool of half-logic she used as her form of self-mortification. He knew she would always be a little broken, and she hated herself for it. From what Archer had told him, Surak was a kind, compassionate, almost loving person, but what his system of logic had become was frequently almost hateful. The demands of their system did not gently teach and calm T'Pol, it scolded her furiously as he sometimes felt her damning herself for giving into her stronger-than-human feelings. He sometimes didn't even realize how much he thought about her, how much he worried about her, it was just such a case now as his attention finally shifted to her almost desperate grasping. He could feel her want, her desire for intimacy with her mate, wanting to feel the reciprocation of emotions instead of this strangely cold analysis that seemed to radiate off him as an impersonal void against the fire of her need.

The desire in her eyes was the same now as when he had tenderly fed her the pimientos de padrón earlier in the evening. It had been such a simple but intimate act, the emotion he projected to her as he held the tiny heat-browned green pepper to her lips. He almost could feel the taste of the subtle sweet nuttiness just before the heat hit her. As she flushed warm, her feelings, already muddled some by the gin and vermouth, started to confuse the capsaicin reaction with the heat of sexual desire. The pear taste of her martini, the mixture of flavors from the peppers, the dark lighting, the almost-risqué romantic words and rhythms of the classic soul being performed by the band, the glut of sensations nearly sent her over the edge. As he touched her while they slowly danced she had trembled slightly, in her mind, projecting to his, the fear was undercut with sensations of joy, bliss. Even now she was whimpering for his lips, not so much wanting as needing. Her mind stumbled over thoughts of the Pon Farr, trying to reconcile the concept that it could be happening now, long before it was supposed to. The part of her mind that still contained the pooled remains of her gently melted logic was telling her it wasn't the case, that she simply felt a healthy desire for her mate. This was Vulcan; the limitless passion shared in the bond, imperfect as it was given her partner's lack of latent telepathy, was no less startlingly strong.

He obliged her, lowering the face she was stroking with what bordered on desperation to hers. His kiss was chaste but she felt the fire in his comparatively cool lips. A soft, soothing, unconditional love radiating through the touch into her. She sobbed softly as the lips parted for a moment, showing her want through the high-pitched muted whimper. The heat of her forehead against his feeling like flame against ice, he once again clamped his lips to her, mouths moving desperately to taste their opposite number. Her head was swimming, sucked into the liquid current of sensations and feelings.

"Please." She let out as a hissing whisper.

"Yes?" He said, his voice husky with bedroom tones.

"Stay with me, tonight." She dug her fingers into the chest of his shirt, burying her face into the shirt just over his left clavicle.

He didn't reply, feeling deeply conflicted. His own selfishness would rather deprive her of her need expressly to avoid the torture of forced abstention later. All of this was overridden by what he knew was his duty as a mate in the Vulcan way. He was to give himself to her fully as she was to give herself fully to him. If he fell into the desire she was projecting, the desire he had himself that was being further stoked via the link, he knew he would never be able to escape it.

"I need you." She cried softly, her voice cracking in that way that made it the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

Her passion speak reawakened memories of the night she gave herself to and took him. The Vulcan voice and speech, the hallmarks of their cool focus giving away as she let passion force sounds out of her she had never made in her life. Cries of pain, joy, ecstasy, emanating from a throat that never made such sounds. Her pleading for the completion of the act, the sobbing cry of despair and refusal as she was made a woman, the joy as her body was commandeered by shuttering spasms of primal ecstasy. The most beautiful act in her life, made pure despite the debasement of her reasoning in competing the act. It had been her Kal-if-fee whereby she had claimed him. If given the choice to do it all over, he only regret would be not having come to understand her feelings even earlier.

The clinging desire that was seeping out of her consciousness wasn't specifically sexual in nature, it was all accepting. Whatever her mate may construe as the nature of the mandate, she would embrace it just to share the closeness until her ancient instincts were satiated. He didn't feel any specific sexual want at the moment, despite the touching, the kissing, he didn't feel the aching throb that called for sex. He just wanted to touch, to feel, to envelope her in his arms and slip away into the nothingness of contentment, the Zen Koan that existed in the purest form of the male/female relationship.

He said nothing, softly pushing her away with purposeful hands. She felt his benign sternness and stood still, trembling as he undressed her. She stood, still shaking, completely accepting whatever he intended to do. She choked back a cry of joy as he scooped her up into his arms, carrying her petite body over to the bed and laying her gently on it. Pulling back the sheets he started undressing himself and once similarly unclothed he climbed into the bunk with her, pulling the sheets up to cover them both and taking her into his arms. Feeling her warmth and focusing on it to project it back to her. She stopped shaking and took a series of desperately sobbing breaths as the emotions continued to assault her.

Trip forced every thought from his mind except for the deep love he felt, it was another blanket in which he could wrap her. Her breathing calmed as she nestled her back against his chest, his rough hands gently stroking her side and taught stomach. The primal desire to touch, to feel, to love her mate quickly became satisfied and she drifted into an impossibly abrupt and deep sleep.

He lay next to her, holding her close as she slept for what felt to be a long time, softly whispering into her hair, enjoying her smell and the feel of it. It was a dreamless sleep and the only thing he felt from her was her deep feeling of contentment. Slowly, deliberately, he removed his arms from around her. He could sense no change coming from her mind as their touch telepathy was slowly severed by the separation of their physical bodies. There were few times he consciously reflected on how thankful he was for his long limbs and height. The first time he had honestly been glad of the fact was during the 47 offensive when he had used his reach and flexibility to great effect during the horrific over-run melees the Klingons had instigated. Being able to reach inside the sweep of their weapons and lock their limbs allowed him and other GRAs to bring the advantage of their superior strength to bear. He had beaten more than one Klingon to death with his bare hands, still remembering the sensation of facial structure giving way under his fist sent a small shudder of guilt and disgust through his body. To kill, to end a life, an act he had done more times than he cared to remember. In the moment it becomes you or them, in the short term it is part of the operational mandate, it was living, surviving, that accorded the luxury of introspection and guilt. It was among his most deeply buried feelings; dead Klingons, their faces strangely calm and devoid of animosity resting next to the final memories of Elizabeth's face. In his mind the quiet place along a wooded river that was the paradise for the dead, brutal Klingon warriors lived in peace with his sister he had lost during the short-lived ill-fated Xindi attack. This was the survivor's guilt he never let T'Pol see, instead he buried it progressively deeper and deeper in his psyche, covering it with whatever mental detritus he could to ensure it remained occluded and secret.

He dressed with mechanical efficiency, not even thinking about the process of doing so, hardly thinking as he lifted her clothes from the floor, folding them neatly and placing them on a dresser. He allowed himself the indulgence of selfishly painful sentimentality for a few more minutes until he began to feel the subtle darkness of sorrow bleed into the contentment of her sleeping mind. He forced the thoughts away, gritting his teeth and wiping tears he had not realized had formed from his eyes. The torpedoes, the vernier systems, that was his goal. Concrete objectives, he had used those to distract him through the entirety of the Xindi campaign despite the burning hatred and sorrow he had felt. He manifest the emotions into the somatoform disorder, pronounced insomnia worse than he had ever experienced, looking for a possible issue to blame he defaulted to the scar tissue. Those scars hadn't bothered him in years, he routinely suffered from certain degrees of insomnia that he had never bothered to fully explain. When the Xindi campaign began, he would routinely retire to his quarters at night to find himself unable to sleep and stewing in a rage so strong he felt himself losing control, he started blaming the scars for his lack of sleep so he had a suitable excuse that didn't require a mental health screening.

After five or six days of no more than three hours of sleep he had finally gone to Phlox to be drugged to sleep. After three times of this, the Doctor had finally suggested he seek holistic alternatives to the sleeping issue. The fact he was leaving T'Pol's quarters now was all because of his deep conflict. It had all been a lie, he was the unstable one, not her. It was her own weakness in the face of the Trellium-D exposure that gave him the strength to endure, he could look at her with pity and remind himself he was, at least, not as messed up as she was. Their relationship had been born of Nightingale Syndrome, he was taking care of her, not she him. He worried that if she ever found out the truth it would destroy their relationaship, and more specifically her, by proxy. He felt as though he could handle the solitude, humans could fall into a routine, immerse themselves in friends to beguile themselves from the emotions of loss and heart break. How would a Vulcan deal with it, especially a Vulcan as damaged as she was?

_Stop thinkin' about it, godammit, Tucker. I love her, I love her more than anything, and I know she loves me. Leave it at that._

The vernier system; it had to be improved upon, this was the mandate, this was the goal, this was the thing he loved as an engineer. Labs produced a finished product, but it was up to men like him to make sure that a piece of equipment that had received a stamp of approval for production would function at its maximum potential. _Enterprise_ had not received its orders yet, but there was a fair chance they would be sortied to the Klingon Border to provide additional support to the _Degüello_ battle group. The ship was even now being upgraded with Photonic Torpedo systems, but the heavy anti-capital ship missile system would remain as well. The photonic system was more compact, highly flexible and boasted increased range, however it didn't have quite the purpose-driven offensive punch of the Type 51 Torpedoes. It was at once a frighteningly complex and sublimely simple system. The end cap containing a combination impact/proximity detonation fuse that would set off the first stage of the warhead; thermo-hydrodynamics rendering a four millimeter thick copper plate a lance of white hot liquid material to cut through external hull plating and internal substructure, next a secondary charge would blow outwards opening the hole already weakened by the penetration of the liquid copper, finally a thermobaric charge would ignite any burnable gases in the escaping atmosphere, the chain reaction serving to both explosively decompress the exposed deck sections and, sometimes, destroy nearby critical systems. It was, in objective analysis, a cruel weapon that killed in the worst ways imaginable for a space based craft. Its efficiency when it struck a target was brutal, a terror weapon that was meant to, interestingly, prevent loss of life by so terrifying an enemy that the mere threat of its use could dissuade a foe from fighting. There was a problem however, during the space battles of the "47 war" it was found that the narrow profile of many Klingon ships made the likelihood of an effective and ideal strike on the part of the 10 meter long high yield weapons complicated.

His solution was simple, but required an operating system be tailored for the torpedoes that allowed the weapon to strike from above or below against the broad flat surfaces of dorsal and ventral structures. To accomplish this, the maneuvering verniers had to be fine tuned to allow the sudden pitch at the end of the firing arc preceded immediately by the main propulsion motor cutting to allow thrust to be adequately redirected. The simple calculus of the design reconfigure was not so much the issue as was the capacity of the venier system to accommodate it.

_Zero one twelve...at least you don't have to report for duty at zero seven hundred_, _'cause this could take hours_.

Cargo bay two had been informally requisitioned for his experimentation, the planed retrofits had not been slated to interfere with this section of the ship so he had set up his guidance system in the cavernous opening with posted warnings that implied bloody reprisal if his equipment was molested in any way. Using old fashioned paper and tape he had scrawled huge, thick black letters ordering "do not touch" with a crude and rudimentary skull and cross-bones underneath. In retrospect it was almost an invitation to the mischievous to defy the order. Approaching the pristine booster assembly clamped to a suspension rig that had been bolted to the deck floor he inspected it for any disruption. Finger and thumb prints on the mirror polished sub structure indicated where some roaming retrofit crew had deigned to touch and examine the assembly. A crumpled sandwich wrapper on his work bench indicated that someone had, at some point, eaten their lunch here. Still, his tools, data PADDs, and other equipment were more or less exactly where he had left them. Human curiosity being what it was, his mandate to keep away had just drawn them closer, but at the very least no specific spite had been directed at his efforts. It was simply a defiant "yeah, we were here, what are you going to do about it" similar to the antics he himself had involved himself in as a boy. Picking up a PADD he began inputting the latest set of figures he had devised. It would be a long next few hours.

* * *

><p>T'Pol awoke to find her bed empty, the few dreams she experienced had been strange, almost subtly disconcerting. The first had bothered her most, and even now she was remembering it. A shallow wide stream, lined on both sides with trees and foliage indigenous to the sub-tropical heat of Florida. On the opposite bank, Klingons and a human woman stood looking back at her, their faces calm with a strange detachment. It took a moment before she recognized the human female, the subtle nuances of her Tucker genes initially evading her attention. She called out, running towards the group but finding her limbs slow to react, as if weighted down.<p>

"Elizabeth!"

Before she could make it half way into the stream which seemed to sap the remainder of her speed and energy, they turned and summarily disappeared as the entire dynamic of the landscape spontaneously changed. The dream faded and she once again had slipped into nothingness. The next impression that had come to her still working but sleep lulled mind was of complex equations; thrust output, velocity models, Newtonian physics. From these dreams she returned to a waking state, and she stretched herself at the feeling of relaxation and relief in her muscles, still she pondered where her mate had gone and why.

She looked at the chronometer next to her bed, 0748. She stretched out again to enjoy the sensation of muscle relief, becoming aware of her nakedness and suddenly forgetting what had actually occurred after reaching her quarters beyond the must imprecise impressions she had of passionate bonding. She focused her concentration to between her legs, trying to determine if there was some tell-tale trace of him still there, the feeling of semen left behind from coupling. She felt nothing out of the ordinary to her combined relief and chagrin. The sex act would have certainly enhanced their bond and it caused her marginal displeasure to think that she had been resistible to a degree to where he could stave off his instinctive desire to physically mate, and often. At the same time she was glad it had not happened as her inability to remember the events of the late night would have indicate she had forgotten it. She never wanted to forget, any of it.

Crossing to the communication console on the wall she depressed a key and spoke, "T'Pol to Tucker."

She heard a mildly groggy reply shouted across a cavernous expanse from the other end, "Yeah...good mornin'."

"What are you doing?" She replied with cold Vulcan bemusement.

"Verniers!"

She arched her brows, "Are you alone?" She damned herself for seeming to obvious but immediately realized it was a legitimate safety question.

"Just me down here."

"Would you please come to my quarters."

"Sure, be there in a sec."

She didn't bother dressing, she would be taking a shower in a moment regardless. She began to survey the room, looking for the clothes she had apparently discarded or had discarded for her before retiring to the bed. She noted them folded on the dresser opposite the room. From the way they had been arrayed with mechanical military fashion that was inefficient but prodded by discipline she knew he had done so and smiled softly to herself. She noted her own subtle odor as she stood in the room reflecting, the mildly woody scent of her skin excretions. Vulcans did not sweat, but they still relied on the skin as a filtering and excretion organ to removed waste and toxins. Durring times of intense emotional or physical exertion or stress the effect was more pronounced. He was close now, she could sense his own thoughts about his odor as well and more than a bit of passing dissatisfaction about his own attire. The door chimed and she caught herself before she reflexively granted permission for entry. If, on the off chance, it had not been her mate she would not want to be see nude.

"Trip?"

"Yeah, it's me." he sounded tired, perhaps a little exasperated.

"Come in."

He stopped dead in his tracks, having just a moment before looking down with dissatisfaction at the stain on his shirt, it had been his own fault for not changing out of his civies. His eyes were greeted by her naked form, standing unabashedly in a deep contrapposto arms folded over her breasts.

"We need a shower." She stated flatly.

"So much for Vulcan modesty." He quipped, the grin forming despite his best efforts not to appear rakish.

"It is nothing you haven't seen before."

"Still..." He felt the first twinges of morning tumescence instinctively forming.

"Would you prefer to bathe separately?" She inquired, arching a brow, challengingly.

"Well..."

"Well, what?"

"In interest of efficiency...oh hell, I dunno."

She strolled past him into the washroom and turned on the shower. He began to strip down unbidden, not out of any particularly sexual impulse as finding the idea enjoyable, fun. Part of him silently wondered, though, if this was not pretext to the beginning another round of their cold sparring before the tension finally hit the breaking point leading to catharsis again. Realistically speaking, she must still be feeling the strong affection despite the flat inflections of Vulcan logic or she would have never been so pointedly open. For all their collection, Vulcans still seemed squeamish about nudity and were not matter of fact about it even with their strong every-day disassociation with sexuality. It was odd to see an entire race of prudes, but that's pretty much what it was. He paused when he noticed she was staring, her expression bemused. Following her line of sight he knew exactly what she was looking at, feeling it almost twitch sympathetically.

"It's mornin' darlin', it just kind of happens."

"Set phasers to stun?" She quipped.

"Hormones spike in the early hours, it just goes at attention on its own most of the time."

"And my state of undress had nothing to do with it?" She had the Vulcan amusement on her face again, a far cry from her emotiveness the previous night, but still an indicator that she was feeling good natured.

"That...probably helped." He grudgingly assented under his breath.

"I have never noticed this issue through your uniform in the past." She was teasing him again, her emotions were much more under control than she knew they had been the previous evening, but she was feeling no less affection.

"I get up extra early to make sure it's not an issue...'sides it's not like I walk in on naked Vulcan knock-outs routinely in the course of a duty shift."

"I would certainly hope not." She sounded scolding, then after a beat, "I am not sure there is the room necessary on the ship to hide them from everyone else."

She had just made a joke, he was sure of it. He stopped dead again, eyes narrowed, looking at her with lips pursed. It was like the old T'Pol but not; she was witty, teasing, almost subtly affectionate. Had they managed to bond that much over a single night or what she still basking in the afterglow? Maybe this is what a Vulcan hangover was like.

"T'Pol, darlin', are you feelin' alright?"

"I'm fine, Trip. Is something wrong?"

"No, not at all...that's the point."

"Perhaps we should proceed with the shower, we are wasting water as it is."

He followed her into the just-roomy-enough stall and yelped audibly at the heat of the water. She looked at him with another amused expression, the emotive element limited to her eyebrows as she reached over and lowered the temperature a few degrees. He reached past her, grabbing a bar of soap and began lathering up his hands. Looking at her, he pointed downwards with an extended index finger and completed a rotating motion, she immediately complied and turned on her heel to present the desired facing, prompting him begin soaping her back and shoulders. The touching was matter of fact, tinged with just the barest elements of affection. Through the fingers and palms on her skin she felt his thoughts as he deliberately rendered the activity into the most non-sexual way he could. It was amusing to see or, rather, feel him trying so hard to not give into the powerful instinct he was experiencing. As his hands moved down her legs and across her buttocks she couldn't help but accept the fact that it felt good to be touched so familiarly. A stinging swat to her bottom forced her to hop and let out a small yelp of surprise. She turned around to look at him with a mixture of confusion and mild outrage.

"You're done!" He offered with a grin.

She shook her head, fighting back the smile of her brows as she did, "Just when I start to believe the perceived immaturity of humans is an unfair characterization..."

"Yeah, yeah...heard it before, darlin'."

He handed her the bar of soap and pulled down the shampoo from a shelf, pouring a measure of the viscous substance in his hands and began to lather her hair as she proceeded to lather and wash her front. His fingers were digging at her scalp with almost uncomfortable vigor, it continued to the point where she was about to voice a complaint when the rough treatment stopped for a more gentle massaging of the skin and hair. She closed her eyes contentedly as nerves that had been rendered alert and tender from the initial kneading began to send soothing signals. If he treated her hair like he treated his own it helped explain how it was always so scrupulously clean and soft.

"How is the missile system upgrade going?" She asked as her head bobbed effortlessly under the guidance of his fingers.

"Pain in the ass, darlin'. Trying to milk maximum efficiency out of the verniers is turning into a bear of a job. Each line of code changed means I have to go back and switch four more."

"If you had waited until the morning I would have assisted you." She offered with what approximated sweetness.

"I've got one of the thrusters up to one hundred forty eight percent of factory specs. Just gotta emulate that result in the other seven. I'd love the help, darlin'. Oh, and we need to be off the ship by sixteen thirty hours."

She turned trying to arch her brows again but was rudely foiled by a ribbon of suds descending to her left eye, forcing her to instinctively squeeze it shut significantly contorting her expression to make further facial expression impossible.

"They're goin' to be performing a number of retrofits on the gravity plating and environmental controls. They've already moved Phlox's critters over to the station, but we have to clear out for at least twenty four hours." He wiped the shampoo suds from out of her face.

"Do we have plans?"

_We, she said we_. Some of the initial fears that she was coming down off the emotional high from the previous night and would become thoroughly intractable as she once again reverted to strict discipline in the next few hours, was dissipated. She seemed to actually be enjoying be near and with him, _agreeable_ are her people termed it.

"I know where my folks keep a key to the back door of the house..." Trip shrugged, not having anything better in mind.

"That would be agreeable. I would dare to guess there will be fewer intoxicated academics to confront us about perceived Vulcan biology." She stepped under the water to rinse off as her mate began to lather himself up.

"Don't jinx it, darlin'." Still he smiled at her uniquely Vulcan humor.

She emerged from the water, smoothing her hair back and out of her face, she was ravishing, and Trip found himself using every ounce of willpower he could summon to avoid grabbing her and commencing with love making right there. "Speaking of biology." She looked down at the defiant erection that seemed to refuse to surrender to flaccidity.

"I can't help it!" He protested, "I've been behavin' perfectly, didn't get fresh with you once, he's crashed the party and he won't go home." He looked down, cocking a fist at the recalcitrant organ mouthing some sort of threat.

T'Pol's hand hovered over the temperature control, she cocked her left brow upward standing clear of the nozzle, she pointed at her backside, her expression wry much the way it had been during the revelation that he had become "pregnant" with Xyrillian eggs during their first tour together. She was going to hold the love-swat against him, it had not been, per-se, an example of behaving perfectly. He was so delightful to tease, his reactions were always so perfectly genuine with her, never did he attempt as some males did to elevate or accentuate their perceived physical or mental fortitude.

"Oh come on, you wouldn't..." There was an edge of pleading in his voice. "C'mon T'Pol, it's not hurtin' anyone, don't pull that one on me." His hands were, by this point, entangled washing his own hair, a task he would seem to compulsively insist on finishing no matter what happened. It was like some mental haywire, once he began to shampoo he would not stop doing so until he was satisfied his scalp and hair were clean.

She slapped the control, taking the temperature for a comfortable 101 Fahrenheit to a frigid 72. She dashed past him and out of the shower as the first stream of cold water hit him. His body was already acclimated to the hot water, capillaries dilated in his skin to bleed off heat, it made the water feel that much colder. He almost shrieked.

"Jesus! God almighty!" He backed into the opposite corner of the shower, standing on his toes to avoid the water that seemed even more cold in the steamy bathroom. She began to towel off in a deliberately provocative manner, continuing the rather elaborate joke at his expense.

"Damnit all..." He sighed took a deep breath, "Just like boot camp Chuck...just like boot camp." He stepped under the cold water, making a series of hooting shouts as he acclimated to the cold.

Having finished drying her body she wrapped a towel around her head and took a small jar from her medicine cabinet. Opening the jar she took a measure of the salve onto her fingers and began rubbing it down her arms and shoulders. The water cut off a moment later and she heard the door open, she turned back, noting that the cold water had helped the "condition" but had not totally ended it. His expression showed his appreciation of what he was seeing.

"Darlin' that has got to be the sexiest thing I have seen in years." Or at least since a few moments before when she came out from under the shower-head, he reflected.

"That is not my intent." She reflected that her statement was at least partially true.

"Well if it had been you'd be doin' a hell of a job at it."

She turned and approached him as he toweled off, "It is a Vulcan liniment often applied before a pilgrimage across the Forge."

"Certainly smells nice." There were hints of camphor, jasmine, and nutmeg. It was an exotic smell, hinting at the antediluvian silk road and bazaars. Leave it to the Vulcans to come up with something that brought back such esoteric memories to humans. Her small hands began working across his chest and shoulders, rubbing in the thick waxy lotion.

"It should not take too long to finish the calibrations you have in mind, then I am eager to leave the ship." She commented, feeling the pleasure her touch was causing him through the bond.

"Sounds like a good idea," He squinted his eyes shut, fighting back the feelings that were reigniting the fire in his groin. "You can apply the existing program fixes I made for the other seven verniers and I'll trouble shoot any code-line conflicts. We can apply the working upgrade when we get underway." He was biting his lip now, straining, physically trying to force the blood to any part of his body that was not his crotch.

"You do realize trying to fight off a biological response is illogical." She said with all the flatness he had come to expect from her.

"I just don't want you to stick me back in a cold shower again."

"We could deal with the issue in the most logical way should it happen again."

"I'm not pinin' for castration quite at this stage of my life, darlin'."

"That is not what I was implying by a logical way of dealing with it." Her tone had barely changed but there was an edge to her voice, as if her breath was caught just a little.

His eyes widened, "Nope, no, no ma'am. Calibrate the veniers, pack an over-night and get the hell out of Dodge, that's the itinerary for the mornin. Nothing about playing house."

"But we will be going to your parents' house, and they are not home, ergo, playing house." She challenged with the same teasing inflection he had come to recognize.

He turned and left the bathroom briskly babbling protesting words, grabbing his undershorts and promptly pulling them up. "I toldya, T'Pol. If we start now, you're goin' to ruin me. I'm not goin' to be able to make it through the next tour of duty with nothing but neuro-pressure and stealin' kisses from you in the Turbolift."

"There is nothing that states that a neuro-pressure session has to be a neuro-pressure session." She stated matter-of-factly.

"You do know sound can carry through these bulkheads, even with all the armor reinforcement. In fact, it acts almost like an amplifier, all you have to do is stick your ear to a wall panel and you can hear anything over 86 decibels carries right through, as clear as day." He wasn't sure why he was protesting but he was; practicality, pragmatism, rationality...he was being more Vulcan about it than she was.

"I can bite your shoulder." Flatly.

"And what will I bite?"

"Your knuckles." With marked blandness.

"You have all the answers, don't you?"

"Yes." The more Vulcan she acted the more it was starting to turn him on.

This was flustering him in a way only she had managed, so it shouldn't have been much of a surprise, but at the same time he was ridiculously turned on, almost uncomfortably so. His stomach churned, his neck ached, and he could feel a growing pressure in the testes. She took the teasing entirely too far, clearly having not come to understand the nuance and appropriateness of differentiation between teasing of the friendly and sexual variety.

"I'm going to vernier the calibrations...calibrate the verniers." He stammered.

"You could at least help me finish applying the balm."

"I thought Vulcans didn't even like sex." He squinted at her with implied dubiousness.

"Some seem to enjoy it immensely, it is all incumbent on how strong the mate bond is and the individuals involved." She took his hands, dipping his fingers into the balm then forcefully applied his hands to her upper chest and clavicle, moving his hands in circular motions before letting them go so he could complete the action himself. "Our previous sexual encounter was very agreeable to me and at the very least agreeable to you. I have no reason to believe that frequent contact of that nature would not be beneficial and should be sought when circumstance allows."

He sighed, his face beet red as his hands moved further down on her body, obliged to complete the act they had started, "You don't play nice."

**[! Author's Note !] Just a few more chapters of pseudo-smuff and it'll get into serious galacto-political drama, I promise.**


	4. Chapter 4

His fingers soared over the keys on the PADD, correcting a sequence of program conflicts in the lines of code, the new computer-language providing corrected commands to each of four other vernier motors that would be used in accomplishing the course-corrective maneuver. He had hoped to arrive at the cargo bay thirty minutes sooner than he had, ideally he had wanted to be finished with the program revisions before 1200 hours to ensure they got clear of the ship in plenty of time. The delay was courtesy of the rather extended length of time it had taken to calm T'Pol down. He had to admit it was starting to wear on him, he had expected that she would have much lower "maintenance" requirements than she was proving to have. Maybe it was his own fault for starving her of attention so consistently during the previous tour of duty. It had been a short four months given his acclimation for being "at sea" twelve or more months at a time. He was going to have to find a Vulcan he could talk to frankly about what was and was not normal among Vulcan couples. He was at least partially certain that his human nature and thought patterns bleeding through their quasi-telepathic bond was to blame. Maybe it was as simple as her needing to get-off one good time and she would settle down, one earth-shaking orgasm to take the edge off for her, if that was the case he could accomplish the act manually and they could be done with it for a while.

He was appalled by his own crassness about it; he loved T'Pol, had a strong emotional and physical desire for her, but he couldn't help but put duty first. He was a horrible mate, the old Vulcan scholar/wise men/priests had told him that a male in the Vulcan tradition should be attentive to his female, to cherish her, to be pleasing and tender to her. She was a cat in heat and his only response was to splash water on her. He didn't want to think he had made a huge mistake, but he was beginning to wonder; she might have learned to appreciate and bond with Koss. When she had declared him her champion in the Kal-if-fee he should have turned her down outright. The very thought caused him almost physical pain as a despairing sob quietly exited him, he thought it was from him, could have been her? His thoughts were causing disturbance and a strange sadness in the bond and he couldn't quite discern its genesis as they were both experiencing it. He didn't know if it was from her, from him, or a combination of the two. No, he resolved, he could never be without her, he loved her, and he wouldn't ever be whole again if she wasn't his. The thought caused him a strange sadness as he contemplated living a life without her, but he felt a twinge of comfort that was somehow alien to his mind. In a dark occluded part of his mind where he found he could think in private he also made a note to inquire as to how one would go about blocking the link. For now, he had to just keep reassuring her, this relationship had to be harder on her than it was on him, knowing she would outlive him, that he could easily find love elsewhere if she were to ever spurn him, she on the other hand had made forself a bed she would likely never be able to escape.

_I love you, darlin', I'll never be whole without you, I'd fight for you again any day, I'd fight ten Kosses simultaneously for you._ He projected the essence of the thought as hard as he could and was gratified to feel it strangely folded into the outer edges of her consciousness that he could feel as it slowly and inexorably became a component of his own.

The vernier assembly sprung to life, the motors firing intermittently long and short bursts occasionally letting out a sputtering cough as he ran the new program through a hypothetical course. Feedback flowed into the PADD, peaks and valleys falling into the narrow acceptable range that implied the thrusters were reacting exactly as was required. It was a torture test, forcing the engines to simulate maneuvers the torpedoes would never be required to make but pushed the absolute limit of their redesigned capacity. A rhythmic chorus of long bursts, short pulses and staccato coughs sounded through the bay as it completed the last high-stress simulated turn. The bay went silent and the program flashed a green completion. The PADD quickly extrapolated the data, with all eight motors functioning per the new specifications, it was reporting a 217.8% of factory performance.

He looked back at T'Pol and grinned wide, "We did it, darlin'."

She wore a gratified expression but there was a shimmer in her eyes that bespoke unbidden tears that had tried to emerge in response to his earlier thoughts. The sharp edges of the ferocious calculus of his mental process had savaged the geometry of hers and she was at once hurt, relieved, and confused. She was trying incredibly hard not to show it and, truth be told, six months ago he wouldn't have but now, he could feel the underlying pain. He lowered the PADD to hang in his hand at his left, his mouth drawn into a thin line and his eyebrows bowing in contrition. He walked over to her, putting a crooked finger under her chin to raise her now lowered eyes to his.

"Hey...I love you more'n anythin'. Don't ever doubt that."

She opened her mouth to insist that she had not, but knew that he knew better. It wasn't the same dynamic as the Expanse, he could feel her in ways her previously bond-virgin mind did not always comprehend. Or it could just be that his remarkable attention to detail and natural empathy had made her that easy for him to read.

"It's cause I can feel you, darlin'," He replied, setting the mental debate to an end.

He reached up with his thumb wiping the single defiant would-be tear from her lower left eyelid.

She took a single calming breath, feeling her composure return. She had been on edge since the shower, her attempts to bait him into intimacy had left her in a worse state than him, while his physically outwards signs of arousal had persisted, the more pressure she had applied the more irritated he had become until he finally began to give her a deep tissue massage using human techniques. The touch had managed to make her feel more excited initially, until a languid relaxation served to quench her self-inflicted desire. She had reflected on how strange it was that her teasing had backfired, resulting in her desire spiking and his cooling in total contradiction of her original objective. He checked his wrist-watch and grinned, dropping the PADD on the table that served as work-bench.

"Forty minutes ahead'a schedule. Hell of a team, darlin'."

Heading over to the bay door he lifted their over-night duffels, throwing the straps of each over his left shoulder. She surveyed the work area of the cargo bay and lifted a concerned brow, in response to the relative disorder she saw.

"Should we not attend to returning the equipment to whence it came?" She inquired with more genuine concern than the typical subtle Vulcan pedagoguery.

"We'll leave it for Malcolm, he'll want to go over it all before he starts tryin' to implement the modifications in our ordnance."

"So we're 'passing the buck'?"

He grinned at her use of human verbal mannerisms, "Not 'xactly, darlin'. Malcolm is a stickler when it comes to his weapons systems. He'll want to run the hardware through some not possible in the real world scenarios to see how far he can push things, how well I did my homework. He'll see I was already runnin' those types of scenarios, double check it again anyway, and then he'll proceed to implementation. Remember when I reworked the degaussin' protocols for the rail guns so we could squeeze another three kilometers per second on muzzle velocity? He had me pull twelve barrel assemblies at random so he could be good and damn sure the new subroutines weren't gonna blow the magnets or capacitor banks in a fire fight."

She remembered the incident, it had taken sixteen hours of labor to disassemble the weapons and remove the magnetic arrays. He had, as with most issues, been incredibly hands on, overseeing and in some cases physically doing the work himself for all the weapon assemblies. It had been part of a marathon seven shift effort on his part, 56 hours of work punctuated only by a few breaks of roughtly thirty minutes. When he had finally arrived at her quarters for a neuro-pressure session to wind down in the wake of the remarkable stretch of work he had been so physically exhausted he was positively hysterical and suffering from dehydration and hypoglycemic shock. He cried right in front of her, suddenly caving in with a sense of guilt and loss of self-worth; the desperation of the Expanse, the loss of his sister, and his own emotional confusion about what she did or did not want of him had succeeded in leaving him completely undone. She had been meditating at the time of his arrival and from his reaction one would assume he had just sentenced her entire race to death as he apologized through uncontrolled tears, begging forgiveness for what he seemed to construe as a mortal slight. It had been one of the rare instances where she was able to nurse him instead of the opposite. She remembered cradling his head in her lap while she gently but firmly forced him to drink some water, it had been a uniquely tender moment and she still remembered the feeling of his sweat matted hair and the warm weight of his head against the tops of her silk clad thighs, looking up at her with thanks and adoration as she gently stroked his face and hair. It was that moment when she realized fully the fact that she was in love with this human, despite all her confusion regarding her emotions at the time, it was the one thing she felt immutably certain of.

"Seventy eight point four percent of all efficiency upgrades on this ship directly involve engineerin'. Of those, fifty nine percent are from somebody gettin' a bright idea as to how somethin' should work better than it currently does and leavin' it to guys like me to figure out." He continued. "If I could write down half'a the solutions I come up with, I could publish a new MCS engineerin' primer and get a nice cushy desk job at command."

"You would not enjoy that."

"I...might..." He quavered haltingly.

"No, you would not."

"Well...you're right. Wouldn't be the same, not gettin' the feel the engines, not be able to feel when there was a power shift that causes the grav plating to cut for that fourteen thousandths of a second."

By this point she had crossed to the bay doors, and was standing next to him.

"And I'd miss the hell out of you." He said softly, giving her a soft, puckered-lip peck on the lips.

She smiled, an actual smile that conformed to the universal non-Vulcan emotive standards of facial expressions. Physically the corners of her mouth hadn't moved upwards more than about six millimeters, but given the lack of overt facial reaction for most Vulcans it might as well have been a Denobulan sized grin. Reaching over she depressed the opening switch for the cargo bay door and stepped into the corridor, allowing him to follow. As they strode down the hallway to the turbolift he began whistling long wavering notes. The notes that emanated through the puckered lips brought clear mental recollection of the song and it seeped quickly through the bond, she could hear the words as his impression of the recording went. He almost unconsciously began singing the words under his breath. Humans and their love of music, particularly her mate's love for soulful songs of romance, it was intriguing. Vulcan music was limited, steeped in tradition with very little innovation or development over the past five hundred years. One day she would have to introduce him to the music of her people, an artistic pursuit often kept hidden by Vulcans as it was often tied deeply into the framework of the marriage bond. Without even realizing he began singing out loud, holding long notes in a deceptively melodic voice as he inadvertently serenaded his Vulcan love.

"...I can save myself a lot of useless tears, girl I gotta get away from-"

Heavy footfalls coming down the corridor forced him to stop mid verse. Malcolm Reed appeared from just around the curve in the corridor seeming to halt mid-step his face immediately evident as being deeply surprised. The armory officer was in civilian clothing but still carried himself with a distinctly martial air that seemed to be as much the product of breeding as personal training.

"Hey, Malcolm. We got those configurations done for the type fifty one verniers in Cargo bay two." Trip commented amicably as they walked past.

The initial shock of once again seeing the two of them in civilian clothes, walking side by side, the tell-tale pair of duffle bags on the shoulder of the 1.93 meter tall GRA Engineer froze the Augmentee Briton in place. His brain seemed to chew on some piece of rhetoric before he finally turned just before they disappeared around the bend in the corridor.

"Just one bloody moment, where are you going?" His voice carried a strong measure of confusion with hints of amusement and agitation.

"Florida!" He shouted back.

"And the Sub-Commander?" He shouted back as they cleared the visual chord of the corridor.

"Flo-rid-a!" Once again came the twangy reply.

Malcolm had been dead-set on finding out from his friend exactly what the hell was going on between him and the sub-commander. He didn't even care that he would be tipping his hand in regards to their soft-espionage from the previous night, he had to hear it from his mouth to settle what was a growing sense of misgivings not only about what had gone on with the Sub-Commander but also whether or not the one MCS officer he was relatively certain had a strict old-fashioned moral code had abandoned it. The Trip he knew, or thought he knew, would never pursue a relationship with a married woman, no matter what they felt for each other or how much the marriage may have been a farce. From down the hall he could hear the whistled notes quickly transitioning into convincingly crooned words that would doubtlessly have worked seductive magic on an enraged Klingon and were, quite likely, doing a number on T'Pol despite her Vulcan reserve which he seemed to mystically dissipate. "Ohhh girl, pain'll double if you leave me now. Cause I don't know where to look for love and I don't, I don't know how."

Reed's mouth pursed into a wry grimace that transitioned into a wryer grin, not entirely sure if it was a pheromone indicative of Tucker or some bizarre mind control that only 8th Gen series 5 Augmentees possessed, but the pretty, intelligent, and fascinating ones always went for him. He had lost track of how many women ranging from the pleasingly pretty to exotic to unbearably gorgeous flocked to the Southern engineer like moths to a high intensity halogen lamp on a moonless night. Worse still was how much he played the gentleman card to spurn the advances. Malcolm's family line was distilled from English officers and gentleman, but by comparison he was an uncooth rake when it came to Trip's antebellum sensibilities.

"Lucky bastard." Reed couldn't fight back the growing grin as he cursed under his breath.

* * *

><p>Looking at the house, a strange and almost oppressive melancholy fell over him. Three miles away was where they had found what was left of Lizzie from the Xindi attack. He remembered the identification images, her finger prints taken from a severed hand with DNA confirmation from part of her right leg below the knee and a piece of her skull with the skin and hair still attached. There hadn't even been a casket, there was no need, the violence visited upon her had rendered everything but the three marginally intact scraps of her body, ash. To this day he wondered if there had been any pain or if the explosive discharge of energy had killed her instantly as her body was torn apart. He fought down a wave of towering rage, utterly hopeless despair, and toe-curling nausea still almost falling as his knees momentarily went out from under him. He staggered, his hand coming out to catch hold of the trunk of an over-grown palmetto. He coughed hard, tasting the bile in his throat and mouth. How was it still hurting him this bad? His parents seemed to have fallen into some bizarre state of denial, as if there had never been an Elizabeth Tucker. Still, if he had been forced to live this close to where she had been prematurely stolen from them and having to see all the pristine remnants of her life, denial would be the only safe-guard against murderous rage or suicide inspiring sorrow. Lizzy had always been his baby sister, no matter how she aged, she was the little girl he had a fraternal duty to protect and succor against any extant threat. He had failed, and the resulting emotions were onces he embraced during the first days of the campaign, allowing the hate and sorrow to fuel him through a week of three shifts on one shift off as he prepared <em>Enterprise<em> to bring the fight to the Xindi. Now those same emotions just left him a weak staggering shell of a man.

"Trip." Her tone was measured but he could feel and hear the concern.

"I'm fine...I'm fine, just felt really tired for a second there." He could sense her recognizing the lie.

"No, you are not fine. This was a mistake, we can go stay somewhere else."

"No!" His counter was sharp, shocking her at its intensity and the emotion behind it that came through the bond, he softened his voice and continued, "I have to face this T'Pol. Its slowly eating away at me, it's like a cancer. Lizzie is gone, I can't change it, I have to let it go." He choked on the last word, the tears coming from no-where, "I have to let her rest and move on with life."

"She would not have wanted you to hurt like this." T'Pol added in the soft way Vulcans did when discussing powerful emotion.

"Christ a'mighty...humans are kind of pathetic when it comes to stuff like this." His candor was an outgrowth of his need to put a brave face on it, to gain some crass emotional detachment.

"It may surprise you to know, but Vulcans often become emotional 'basket cases' after the death of a loved one." She touched him softly, "I mourn with thee, beloved."

"Well, at least we have that in common." He wiped away the tears, gritting his teeth and forcing the pain away like he had physical discomfort durring the worse points of training. Pushing off from the palmetto he had leaned against he continued on to the house with T'Pol in tow, upon reaching the porch he crossed to the porch swing and reach up to the over-hang. He moved his hands over the slats that provided a faux-ceiling until he felt the one that was loose. Pushing upwards he reached in and withdrew a match-box sized container.

"Let's hope they didn't change the locks." he commented wryly.

T'Pol found herself wondering why he was laying on the pretense, she could sense, rather, feel everything he was experiencing through the bond. The cascade of memory emotions, each cutting him like a razor blade of regret, each wound bleeding sorrow and anger. To Vulcan sensibilities it was the worst possible fate imaginable, a death of a thousand cuts. Just the feelings coming through the sympathetic confines of the bond had her focus straining and threatening to buckle, and she knew he was holding the darkest emotions back as she could sense/see the roiling storm of darkness in his mind. She found his ability to even walk amazing, she was certain she would have been catatonic from experiencing just a fraction of what he was, but that was human. They lived with these excesses daily, yet still managed to function somehow, some even better than others she noted with some measured pride in her mate.

Rather illogically, the hidden key had been to the back door, as opposed to the front it was located near. As if to put it opposite the side of the house where the door was located would act as a deterrent to possible theft. Reaching the back door he proceeded to punch in a security code at the keypad next to the door before inserting the key. A small amount of jiggling and he turned the handle.

"Bingo!"

Holding the door open he stood aside, the dark feelings had all been shoved into that place of his from which T'Pol knew they would one day explode, but in the moment he was once again the happy, charming, tease of a human she first knew him as. "Mi'lady, after you and welcome to the House of Tucker."

She stepped across the physical and symbolic threshold surveying the interior with an eye for critique. It was far more subdued than she had expected with an air of quiet comfort; agreeably utilitarian but aesthetically pleasing at the same time. The main room, was clearly designed with relaxation in mind with a media hub flanked with built in book cases on the wall to the left of the door, in the center of the room sat a pair of couches and easy chairs arrayed around low tables. An artificial plant arrangement sat in the middle of the longer coffee table with lamps on the smaller end tables between the two sets of chairs. A large area rug of intricate design sat underneath the furniture atop the wood paneled floor. The air was fresh, smelling slightly of canna lilies, sunlight streaming in from the large windows resulted in a pleasingly warm temperature inside the room. Humans would have considered it warm, but it was well within comfort range for a Vulcan.

Her mate had already crossed to the stair case, calling to her in an affable tone despite the discomfort she felt him suppressing at memories of the house and the absent occupants. "Which room do you want, darlin'?"

"Whatever room you intend to occupy." T'Pol replied with stark frankness. She would not miss the opportunity to share her mate's bed, and in the privacy and seclusion of this place there would be no ban on doing so.

"Guess that's fair enough. I'll put our stuff in the guest room. Make yourself at home."

She listened as she heard him ascend the steps and within moments was nearly floored by a wave of despair she almost could feel flowing down the steps. At first she feared the place where he held his reserve of emotions had finally exploded leaving her waiting to hear an audible collapse, but it became clear that these were new feelings born of his memories about the house and its occupants. This had been foolish, she should had have insisted they go elsewhere when the recommendation had been made. The wave abated as her keen ears detected a fresh sob drift almost inaudibly down the stairs and into the sitting room. She contemplated ascending the stairs, going to him, trying to comfort him in her horribly inadequate Vulcan way, but decided against it. He had to exorcise the pain himself, all she could do was support him through the worst moments of it and continue to promise her own subtle and oft missed unconditional love. The emotion died away, leaving nothing but a residual sting that reminded it had been there moments before, she began a slow count to seventy, then followed up the stairs. Down the hall she spied him just past an open door, placing the duffels neatly on a chest at the foot of a meticulously adorned queen bed.

"It's a bit bigger than a bunk." He forced the chuckle, sensing her presence.

"We should get comfortable, I have no desire to engage in any sightseeing, I believe relaxation would be in both our interests." the business-like voice back once again.

"Alright, darlin', whatever you say. I'll change in the bathroom." He reached into his duffel and pulled out a large pair of shorts, crossing into the adjacent washroom.

T'Pol reached into her bag and pulled out three articles of clothing she had acquired specifically on the chance that they would eventually visit his native Gulf coast. She felt herself flushing slightly at the thought of the clothing, her sense of Vulcan modesty recoiled in horror from the very concept of wearing it's like in front of her mate much less outside the privacy of their home. Still, among humans it was considered only marginally suggestive, almost normal given their current location. Human fixation with allowing themselves to be partially irradiated by Sol had an appeal to her Vulcan appreciation of heat and sun. Clothing of this sort made allowance for that without being overtly sexual. By its very nature it would invite his touch and made drastic concession for exposing skin to fingers and hands. The idea of feeling the intimate touching in open air exposed to the sun seemed uniquely exciting. Always in the past his hands had only touched her face or hands when in full light. She had never exposed herself to him in anything but darkened quarters, this would be a markedly different dynamic.

"Trip, I will change in the washroom down the hall." She reported before leaving the room.

"Alright, but I would've waited for ya' to be finished." Came his distorted mildly-echoing reply from the bathroom.

Emerging from the bathroom he sat his neatly folded and stacked clothes next to his duffel, they were squared with the military precision that had become habit over the last eleven years, since the tender age of 19 he had been trained and drilled mercilessly on the concepts of discipline and precision by MCS. It was evidenced in how he kept his engineering and ran his ship. He would proudly serve the Vulcan High Command and the MCS Admiralty Board dinner from off his warp core without a moment of concern for cleanliness or contamination. It had been a long time since he had been in a pair of swim trunks and he found them strangely constricting around his groin as a result he had them riding low on his hips with the wide pants-leg ending just above his knee. Normally her preferred an offensively garish pattern, but this pair was relatively conservative, sporting a MCS Marine FDE digital camo scheme. They had been intended as a gag gift to the instructors at MARSOC and were to bear the words "With the 'special' thanks of Class 694 MARSOC, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 2147" but the Klingon offensive had started just prior to the official graduation date and he had been stationed to the DDG-49 U.S.S. _Ernest E. Evans_ as part of MCS Task Force: Iroquois. The certificate of completion came after the border war was over, but he had never gotten the swim trunks suitably embroidered and sent to the training cadre.

He still had the "beach" body he was proud of, lean and muscled, but he noted with some chagrin that his extensive time on _Enterprise_ had result in an embarrassingly pasty complexion for a son of The Sunshine State. Without the benefit of a suitable tan the combat scars on his back, shoulders, and left side seemed hideously pink and pronounced doing something to mar what he had to admit was a gender-corrected attractive body. His hyperinsulinism driven hypoglycemia made him the inadvertent envy of much of the ship; he could eat just about anything he wanted any time he wanted without the, sometimes beneficial, effects of weight gain. Once Hoshi had talked Reed, Mayweather, and himself into trying out a diet with her that consisted mostly of vegetables supplemented with fish in the form of nagiri and makizushi. Phlox had sternly scolded him and ordered him off the diet after he had dropped six pounds in as many days. Hoshi who had constantly battled to keep her figured in line with the ridiculous Brazilian Beach metric had been suitably outraged as she measured her weight loss in ounces.

Descending the steps he stepped through the sitting room and out on the back porch to look out at the water, taking a deep breath of the salty spiced air laced with the smell of cannas and mown turf. New memories, he had to make new memories of this place, ones that would serve to supplant the thoughts about his family when his little sister still lived which had now become sour and painful no matter the joy that had created them in the first place. He had to make memories about T'Pol, and their secluded time together in paradise, just the two of them, far from the prying eyes of strangers or crew and the well-intentioned interference that was the hallmark of family. He half imagined her changing into the short silken top and sarong she had worn during their evening in Savannah and let a bare smile touch his lips remembering how beautiful and alluring she was in those clothes. Those thoughts defaulted somehow to thoughts of undressing her and the casual indifference he had affected while letting his eyes feast on the celestial expanse of tight bronze skin. He wasn't sure how she had seemed more sexy to him, clad as she was that night or completely naked and decided after some judicious thought that it was a tie; each were enough to undo his discipline in their own way.

He turned when he heard her soft foot-falls behind him and was struck almost speechless. Being surprised by her apparel twice in as many days had him seriously wondering if he wasn't, perhaps, projecting to much of his own thoughts into her psyche. The bikini top was, admittedly, tame as bikinis went, allowing a hint of her cleavage while still admirably covering her well formed breasts. The bottom had been obscured entirely as the addition of the sarong hid all but the lovely shape of her calves as they gently tapered to the slender ankle. still it rode low on her hips, hinting at the sensitive flesh just beneath. He felt and uncontrollable desire to reach down and touch the sacred place, to feel her grip him in physical pleasure. He stifled the urge, shoving the thought from his mind, this was not the time or the place as badly as he felt himself wanting her now. A white button down blouse, opened but tied just above her navel added a measure of conservative but classic beauty to the ensemble obscuring her shoulders but leaving her exquisitely formed abdomen and waist exposed. The Carmine of the bikini top helped further set off the bronze of her skin, delightfully displayed along her sternum and upper thorax descending to be broken by the momentary white of the blouse before once again expanding into her hips and abdomen. He marked it as a victory that he had kept his mouth from falling open or his eyes widening at the shock.

"You look mighty nice, darlin'." He finally managed.

"Thank you." She offered with Vulcan affability.

"If yer goin' for a statement, you've certainly made one."

"I find the idea of sun bathing agreeable." T'Pol presented in rebuttal, off handedly redirecting his twinges of lust. She felt his arousal, his desire and she found it hard to resist giving in to it.

"Yeah, I suppose we don't get sun like this too often." He stretched his arms again, taking a deep breath. He could definitely chalk this one up as a new memory.

She looked over Trip appraisingly, the symmetry and definition in his physique was pleasing. She rarely got to observe his body in this kind of light, without the muting and tinting effects of artificial light she was able to observe the straw color of the hair on his arms, legs, and chest. She also noticed visibly for the first time the small thin trail starting just above his navel and extending downwards between strongly defined abdominal musculature. This was another trait that helped separate humans from Vulcans; the bodily hair which created agreeable sensations when it contacted her skin and the easy definition of musculature. All of her medical and anatomy studies had shown that Vulcan males never exhibited this particular kind of visible musculature. The softly ecru color of his skin, marred by the chamoisee bat'leth scars, would readily darken to a lovely fallow shade if his face, neck , and hands were any indicator. Physically he was markedly dissimilar to the Vulcan standard that she was biologically inclined to find physically attractive, why then did she find his body appealing? Theories existed that there were aspects of beauty which all sapient species found appealing. Distinct individual elements that held to standards of attractiveness between two otherwise dissimilar species could serve as a metric by which one was judged as physically appealing. She resolved that his visible musculature and lean build suggested he was physically powerful, this appealed to an instinctive desire to have a mate that was capable of providing protection against an environment of hostility. The fact that the standard was not upheld by the vast majority of Vulcan males seemed to indicate that it was a primal element that had been neglected when the society and culture had been co-opted by logic.

"Your appearance is very agreeable, Trip." She commented, a logical facsimile of flirting. She felt heat in her face and her lips almost burned with want, but she stiffled it with some effort. There was a logical process, they had come here to enjoy the environment, when the desire to couple grew to strong for either of them to resist, they would do so.

He blushed, recognizing that she had just effectively told him she found him to be sexy, "Yeah..well..."

Ancient statues from earlier time periods had depicted Vulcan men as being muscular and lean, it seemed to be logical that during the combative days of their culture such physical conditioning would be desirous in that it increased the survivability of males in a war and mating dominated culture. Still, he was human, his skin color, his blue eyes, the golden brown of his hair, the roundness of his ears, and the bushy curvature of his eyebrows all made the differentiation immediately evident in her mind. She suddenly realized the root nature of the subtle friction between their two peoples. Vulcans and humans both looked to each other noting the similarities then being shocked by the differences. Rather they should look to the differences and be shocked by their similarities. Through that lens her mate suddenly seemed more exotic and beautiful to her.

"What can be expected in terms of foot traffic through this area of the beach?" She inquired, her voice tinged by the reserve of Vulcan propriety and just a bit of concern that if the fire of sexual need became to strong they would not make it off the beach before they elected to sate one another.

"Not much to none. Most of the heavily trafficked areas are 'bout a mile south down the coast at the resorts and restaurants. Next house over is usually pretty empty and if the Robinsons still live over there." He pointed southwards to the house about one hundred forty meters away, "They were never too keen on walkin' the beach. Doubt they'd know you from Adam if they were t'come outside."

"I am relatively certain the sexual dimorphisms would adequately differentiate me from anyone named Adam."

"It's an expression, darlin'."

Hands clamped behind her back as if she was still in the comfortable confines of _Enterprise_ she stepped close, craning her neck to look up at him through their nine inch difference in height. A calm, confident, almost sexually charged smile crept onto his face as she deliberately invaded the threshold of his personal space.

"It is agreeable to be here with you." She stated with as much affection as she could affect through the veneer of impersonal logic.

"I'm glad you're here too, T'Pol. Go pick out a strip of beach and I'll get the deck chairs."

She nodded, descending the steps from the porch to the St. Augustine grass lawn, the feeling of the tender blades of foliage caressing her feet was new and unusual to her. The gulf coastal breeze, just cooler than the air teased her, dancing through her hair bringing the smell of clear blue-green saltwater to her nose. The tickling massage of grass gave way to the sensation of current smoothed rocks hot with the sun applying uncaring pressure to the arch of her foot and the sensitive tissue therein. Just as she had acclimated to the discomfort, the tingle of salt infused sand greeted her as pristine toes dug into its course grained heat. Vulcan's sand was a fine powder that infiltrated all that it touched, this felt rough and young, unbowed by the merciless ferocity of the Vulcan ecosystem. The sun beat warm against her body, the heat licking her comfortably to be offset by a gusting breeze that brought a mild chill to her skin. How did humans endure such sensory input? Surakian Logic could never hold sway on this planet, with its vicissitudes and psychotically complicated ecosystems. There seemed to be more complexity in a single biome on this world than existed on all of her home planet.

"How did humans keep from going mad?" She asked as she sensed him near to her.

"We don't...didn't...can't. We're all a little crazy. The list of things that make us crazy is too long to even start listin' here and now. I know it must seem strange to you. Logic saved your people over a'thousand years ago. We're all still crazy, and there's a'million things that make us that way." He answered softly, somehow knowing that she was once again in perspective driven sensory overload.

"On other worlds, I adapt to the situation by focusing solely on a small set of mission specific criterion. In such situations, the plurality is ignored and is prevented from becoming overwhelming. Now I find myself focusing on the plurality to the exclusion of everything else. It is..." She paused, turning to look at him with an expression or analytical amusement, "intoxicating."

"Welcome to Earth; enjoy your stay." He replied with elements of mirth as he set down a wood and fabric sun lounger in the sand behind her.

"I do not believe that we will be able to reach of consensus over which possible planet should serve as home to our family." She said idly, it was so matter of fact but she could literally feel his heart leap in his chest at the implication.

"Being crazy isn't always a bad thing, you know how I said there's 'bout a'million things that drive humans crazy?" His voice had a unique edge she had never heard before but she found strangely appealing, "You're number one on my list."

* * *

><p>In the darkness of the guest room, window open to let in the softness of the night breeze and the pale bluing of moon light, they touched and experienced one another with a familiarity that was governed as much by their familiarity with themselves as individuals as with each other as a couple. This was synthesis, making love like Vulcans would if they didn't have logic and as humans would if they didn't have emotions. He was Vulcan, she was human, they were both at the same time and neither. Somewhere between unrestrained passion, unbridled affection, cold reason and brutal pragmatism they melded in love, hate, joy, sorrow, passion, and logic. Sweating, grinding, gasping, moaning, touching and feeling, loving ferociously and softly at the same time. Both psyches merging to a uniform whole where they did not know where one stopped and the other began.<p>

Fingers dug into sheets, he wasn't sure if they were hers or his, she no longer knew if she was above or below him. Who was kissing who? Who touched who? Was he, he, or was he, she? It was a single consciousness, reacting to its component parts, two beings that had become a flawed but perfect single.

_Who am I?_

_You are you, and I am I._

_But who are you?_

_I don't know._

_Does it matter?_

_No._

_I love you._

_I love you._

_We love us._

_There is no ego, only us._

_We are whole._

_And separate._

_I can feel you, I can hear you._

_This is beyond what I had hoped._

Explosions rocked the joined minds, both feeling like they were dying in a beautiful moment of perfect oneness not just with one another, but with everything. Every atom in the room, every pulse of energy, seemed to be part of their whole for a moment. There was no difference as they both felt muscles strain and spasm devoid of control. For moments they were a single entity split between two bodies until the frantic towering spire of consciousness shuddered and blew outwards, shattering the meta-ego of the bond in time with surging gametes.

_T'Pol._

_Trip._

She shuddered gently underneath him, one strong arm still wrapped around her as another held up his upper body. Her leg wouldn't stop shaking, and in a moment she became aware of the deliciously warm heat that radiated through her tired muscles as chemicals flooded her brain and she softly hyperventilated. Great deep gasps wracked his body as muscles in his pelvis continued pulsing to ensure complete delivery of the precious payload. His entire body was on fire as liquid bliss seemed to course through his very veins. It was better than they remembered the first time being. They couldn't tell if they had been in each other for hours or seconds, it all became an indefinite possibility. It didn't matter either, they both hungered for more of it.

_Is this real?_

_I hope so._

_Pinch me._

A pair of petite fingers clamped to the skin just below his last rib on his left side.

"Oww."

_I believe it is safe to assume it is real._

_I love you so much._

_I have no doubt of that now._

_You did before?_

_...Perhaps..._

He lowered his lips to hers, and she eagerly accepted them. Her scent wafting into his nose perfumed with the smell of the byproduct of their cross-species sexual engagement and night gulf-coast air. She tasted his salty sweat mixing with the taste of her own and naturally occurring lubrication as it had clung to his lips. It was indescribable, not appealing in its own right, but interesting and curious as it implied what they had done, She wanted the taste again and she tasted his mouth hungrily find him more than willing to oblige.

It was a few moments before they realized how exhausted they were and rolling away he collapsed next to her only to have her immediately nestle into him. He was vaguely aware of a pair of bruises forming just above his hips, she aware of the tenderness of the skin around her wrists. At some point they had mated as the fever of the Pon farr would have dictated, but they were also aware of moments of laughter, soft caresses and deep drowning kisses as was the wont of humans. While the human methodology didn't result in any lasting trophies of the act, it was certainly less stressful on their bodies. Still, this was to be their burden; he had to become Vulcan, she had to become human, and in doing so they had to be themselves as well. He had to understand the dichotomy of Vulcan passion and logic better than she did, and she had to understand the inherent bipolarity of human emotion versus their harsh pragmatism better than he.

And above all things, they had to distill that knowledge, than understanding, those contradictory elements into a uniform whole born of the game of their loins and grown inside her. The weightiness of the realization did not way nearly as heavily as the weight of desire they had to complete each other by birth. A child in which they could pour all the love they felt for each other and turn into a being better and beyond what either of them could ever be on their own. Even with all this weighing over them, they still felt nothing but comfort at the moment.

"If our first born is a daughter, I want to name her Elizabeth." She spoke softly into his chest. Their first audible words since their coupling had began.

"I think Lizzy would have liked that." He quavered, running the fingers of his right hand through her bobbed hair.

Tilting his head forward he buried his nose and mouth in the hair, taking her scent in and committing it to his memory. His brain was still compiling the stimuli he hadn't even been aware of. He briefly had the auditory recollection of her completely uncharacteristic cries during the heat of passion. The desperate groans she had milked from him as their love making turned into the bestial fucking of mimicked-plak tow, during those moments he was as mentally Vulcan as she. His blood boiled, he felt the impossible heat radiating from him to her, her to him. He remembered her laugh as they engaged in distinctively human foreplay and her mental processes had been indistinguishable from a human's as they teasingly touched and tickled. These were all sounds he would likely never experienced outside the confines of their passion-bed. She would be T'Pol and he would be Trip, but when the joined in that elemental way, they were neither themselves and both each other at the same time, a new entity. It was like climbing out of his body, out of his soul, and becoming something new and clean. He kissed at her hair and felt her gently press her lips to his chest in response. Rarely was the "after-glow" anything even resembling a "glow" in his experience, but this was the definitive example of the term.

"I will permit you to name the second." T'Pol suggested with faux imperiousness, the humor implied in the statement bleeding through even if the Vulcan reserve was back in her voice.

"I think we might need to get a little more baby makin' practice in between now and then." He grinned, burying his face back in her hair and stroking the gentle concave of her back and side, relatively sure she would find some way to punish him for the obvious teasing. Indeed she did, he felt her teeth nip at his chest with a scolding bite, he jerked instinctively but she didn't relinquish until a few seconds later when she withdrew her mouth leaving a clean impression of her teeth indented in unbroken skin.

"I concur with the assessment." She offered as she examined the love-bite, it had been the logical reaction to his statement.

* * *

><p>Centurion Valek paced impatiently, twelve divisions had been activated for combat deployment with an additional three of Reman augmentees to provide combat support. Still, no word had come down from above as to where they would be going and who they would be fighting, it was not certain whether they faced imminent invasion or if they would be doing the invading. Sub-commander Surat had done little to assuage any concerns regarding an imminent invasion of the Empire, simply ordering him to ensure his men were ready to stand for the Empire. Damn political appointees, if not for his father's position, Surat would barely be considered qualified to lead a commissariat detail. As it was he spouted broad platitudes, regurgitating orders from Commander Tivet and relying on the three Centurions in his command to ensure that orders were followed through. It had been eight hours since the last status of forces update, nothing about a deployment command, nothing about the assumption of defensive positions; a small fleet was hovering in orbit just above the capital without the first hint as to whether it was an invasion or defensive fleet.<p>

Each of his five sub-lieutenants stood in a loose not some fifteen meters away, knowing not to approach him when the mood was on him. Their concern over what was to befall them was muted by comparison to his, but then again, they had always rather emphatically trusted in Valek's capacity to pull them through whatever they may find themselves thrown into. As the youngest of four sons, the Centurion had always realized he would have no political and career currency by dint of his parentage. He was a child of his father's old age and there was a degree of dotage in that regard, but it was always clear that he had three brothers to make it through if he wanted to claim the family legacy and thoughts of fratricide had never once entered his mind even as the relationship with his siblings had grown strained. His eldest brother still treated him with a degree of pedantic concern, never having adequately let go of the concern for skinned-knees and bumped heads he held for the brother seventeen years his junior.

Valek had long been a favorite in his eldest brother's household, his wife had always treated him with kindness and his nieces and nephews always eagerly anticipated his visits. The elder brother had tried, repeatedly, to convince Valek to transfer to his offices as a staff officer, but he had often been forced to refuse the overtures with the justification that he had to prove himself through his own merit. Despite his fears, it had never caused a rift to form between the two as his older brother had, grudgingly, assented to the wisdom of the position.

"Jolan tru, Centurion Valek."

Valek wheeled around to see where Surat had approached, "What news, Commander?" His voice hinted at agitation and impatience that the patrician commander either ignored or didn't notice. His face held the same boyish indifference he had always remembered. Damnable aristocrats playing at soldier, trying to wheedle their way up through service. Still, today there was something different in Surat's eyes, a seriousness Valek had not seen before even as his face affected a sort of dismissive indifference.

"Our cohort is to begin boarding the _Serkeng_ within the hour."

"But our orders, sir?" He growled, his impatience reaching its boiling point.

"I expect you to keep this quiet, Centurion..."

Valek nodded, half bracing himself for another blinding flash of the obvious from the commanding officer he was sure was either horribly incompetent or a Tal Shiar agent.

"Once boarding procedures are complete, the task group makes way for Vulcan." Surat dropped the bomb squarely in Valek's lap, and stood silently for the slightly-older junior officer to digest. The revelation nearly floored him, they would finally retake their homeland and end the cultural schism once and for all, the raptor would prove ascendant.

"I expect your professionalism to be at its utmost, Centurion. This operation will be difficult enough without the inclusion of Remans."

Valek sneered in disgust, "Why are the sending in Remans? Twelve divisions should be sufficient."

"Pacification, it may become regrettably necessary to use a...firm hand with the Vulcans. Remans will act as an extension of the policy." Surat almost choked on the explanation.

"So what then; atrocities, summary executions, rape?" His disdain for the Reman troops came through unabated.

"I do not like it anymore than you!" Surat barked, the first time Valek had heard him do so. Maybe this passive boy was turning into a man after all, it was respectable. "Our anger with the Vulcans has not been lessened, but they are still our cousins and this feud would best be kept within the family. The Remans may be our adopted brothers, but they will never be blood. I had hoped for a peaceful pacification, to allow our numbers to force the Vulcans to conclude, logically, that standing against our invasion force would be folly." He got a slightly far off look and smiled, "They say Vulcan girls are very pretty..." The serious edge that Valek was finding himself strangely respecting came back, "But the Reman reserve and augmentees will serve to complicate things, which means we have to be exemplars and set a standard the Vulcans can respect and accept. Am I understood, Centurion?"

"My apologies, sir. I understand that the vagaries of command affect you as much as they do, I. I will see to the preparations of the men, we will set the example for the cohort, sir." Standing at attention he saluted, "For the glory of the empire, jolan tru."

Surat returned the salute, "For the empire, jolan tru, Centurion."

**[! Author's Note !] Augmentee as used in reference to the Reman divisions refers specifically to the military practice of using existing personnel in a capacity for which they have been additionally trained to bulk an effective combat force. They have not been genetically modified per the use of the word in reference to humans modified by genetic retroviruses.**


	5. Chapter 5

"You're thinking about the engines." T'Pol's voice let more than a little patently Vulcan irritation seep through, it was the one emotion they seemed to show with any consistency. Until a few moments ago she had still been comfortably resting against his naked flesh, their combined scents permeating sheets that would have to be washed after the rose from bed for the day. After their first passion bonding they had fallen asleep only to wake at 0310 and without a word both had headed to the adjoining shower to wash away the residual sex from their bodies. The sensations and intimacy of the bathing act had just served to stoke the fires again, resulting in a far simpler and more physical mating. She hadn't wanted the supreme level of intimacy, didn't want the softness and tenderness like he exhibited earlier. She wanted to experience the raw physicality, the basest and simplest form of coupling, animalistic and unrefined. Even then he had still been far more passionate than she had expected. She woke fifteen minutes ago to find he was already awake, reclining against the head-board, arms folded behind his head, his face looking at once serene and contemplative. She just pulled herself closer into the firm torso, enjoying the feeling of co-radiated warmth where their bodies touched. It took a moment for her mind to fully reconcile the thoughts coming from his, when she had it was a surprise of an almost unpleasant nature. Still, it was so like him, to be thinking about how he could improve the ship's performance, it was what made him such a fantastic engineer. It was his skill that had first attracted her attention, his expertise easily over-shadowed many Vulcans two and three times his age, she found herself curious as to what could make this human function on such a level.

"I think we can squeeze seven point seven five out consistently, maybe even push eight for a short burst of speed in an emergency."

"I am beginning to understand why your liaisons tended to be short." She replied with some unvarnished bitterness.

"Oh come on...what's wrong, darlin'?" He pleaded despite a mild twinge of irritation leaking into the mate bond.

She pointed at his lap, concealed as it was by the sheets his morning tumescence was once again easily visible as it created a tent-pole effect against the cotton bed clothes.

"I told you it just happens." Trip replied defensively. "What do you want me to do about it?"

She sighed, suddenly understanding part of the dilemma, he wasn't even conscious of the latent, deeply repressed instinctual desire. His upper brain function registered no desire to couple now, but his instinctual process, the viciously pragmatic part of his psyche deemed this an ideal time for mating. The human instinct, while coarse and slightly acerbic, felt something like Vulcan logic in her mind, and she was responding as if a Vulcan mate was expressing the conclusion that sex would be a logical activity. She would have to explain some more about the nature of the bond, as strong as it had grown, he still wasn't intimately familiar with its mechanics and its seminal part of their mating process.

"Trip, my desire for physical affection is linked to your own."

"Darlin', sweetie, honey...you are easily the most gorgeous thing in the world to me but I, honest to God, haven't had one thought about gettin' frisky this mornin'."

She felt the genuine truth in his words, but sadly the truth as he understood it and the truth as reality stood did not sync properly.

"You are, you just don't realize it." She replied, the gentleness in his words and feelings taking the edge from her voice.

"What do ya mean?"

"You are experiencing an instinctual desire to mate."

"Oh, well yeah, but that's like part of the reptilian brain process. It's only a few processes more complicated than the part of my brain that is telling me to continue breathing."

"I can feel it though." She countered.

"Oh Lord, so I've been torturin' you every time I wake up with a..." He gestured at his lap with open hands, not wanting to let his frank but crude vernacular create any discomfiture.

"It is not torture, Trip. But I suppose it is too, I think the term would be 'sweet' torture?"

"I'll talk to Phlox...hell I'll go talk to a doctor right now if I have to. Get something to help suppress the testosterone over-flow. There are drugs that can inhibit REMs, with a time released capsule I can ensure I don't get a nocturnal for at least an hour before I wake up, maybe a diuretic to ensure that I don't get a sacral- "

"Don't." She cut him off.

"Well what do you want me to do?" It wasn't an accusation, he seemed to be genuinely concerned over her discomfort.

"Let me grow accustomed to it."

"Should I put it on your calendar the day before, darlin'? 'Zero five thirty, Commander Tucker wakes up with morning wood,' might work but it'll require a helluva lot of explainin' if anyone else was to notice that lil' gem in your planner." His voice expressed a little exasperated amusement with a slightly sardonic edge.

She rolled her eyes, starting to wonder if he was truly hopeless in this regard. Perhaps her status as a Vulcan meant the subtle hints were entirely to subtle since everything tended to be taken at face value. Of course there were easily a thousand things concerning the nature of the Vulcan mate bond that were foregone conclusions among her people that he was likely utterly oblivious to. She tried to think how she would word it to sound neither to cold nor emotionally clumsy. Before she had even opened her mouth or begun to form words his eyes went wide.

"Oh...OOOOOhhhh. I get it." He squirmed a little, leaning forward back bowed and resting his elbows on his legs, looking at her with an expression that was weak with concern and reservation. "It's not very romantic, darlin'."

"It was my understanding that 'getting frisky' did not always entail a suitably emotional moment beyond basic physical desire, was that not what happened earlier this morning?"

"Isn't that kind of...well..." He fidgeted more, a thought came to him and he quickly pushed it into the dark place in his mind where she was not permitted to look. He couldn't look her in the eyes, turning his head away as the full weight of the mental arithmetic hit him. He almost felt nauseous at the thought, and the question became, was this what Vulcan women always had to deal with?

"Trip..." She placed a hand on his thigh, the familiarity and intimacy of the touch designed to draw him out of the dark thoughts.

"It's rape...it'd be like I was raping you." He shook his head, his expression horrified at what he reconciled it to mean. "I can't do that...never...especially not to you. Don't make me do that."

"No. No, it is not like that at all. We project our desires to each other, with time the bond will be strong enough that we will not know whose desire it was to begin with. The longer we are together, the more normalized the feelings will become until we are comfortable with the feelings coming from each other." She had to be tender and explain this to him before he allowed the subtly self-effacing aspect of his personality destroyed him. She could feel the horror and despair at the idea that he would be sexually exploiting her and found herself wondering why he would ever consider that as the case. "I sense the feeling from you and it makes me want...intimacy. In time it will no longer effect me."

"So I just have got to pander to it for now?" The reservation in his voice was still evident.

"It is part of how a successful mate pair develops. It is probably the most effecient method for dealing with the issue short of cursory manual release and I am relatively certain I would provide a much more entertaining and satisfying alternative."

He was starting to detect the hints of amusement in her voice patterns now, and the mirth struck him forcing a grin somewhere between shameless rake and goofy kid, "So knockin' the bottom out of you first thing in the mornin' is part of the job description." He was more amused by the wording of his own assessment than the concept of semi-mandatory morning sex.

She furrowed her brow, unsure as to his meaning until his mental process had formed an adequate framework to project through the bond. The sun had darkened her complexion several shades, but the green tinting of her blush was still evident, suddenly aware of her own nakedness because he was mentally assessing it now. She felt a renewed sense of urgency in her body, and she dug her fingers into the sheets over his naked left thigh. He shifted and his strong callused hand clamped firmly but gently behind her neck, the thumb brushing into her hairline as he eased her head towards his own approaching lips.

"That is precisely the case."

"Well, guess I better get this new morning duty started."

* * *

><p>Thirteen minutes ago they had been discussing some of the finer points of Vulcan sexuality, now T'Pol languished on the thoroughly disheveled bed, heaving in deep lungs-full of air. Clearly her understanding of "getting frisky" had been sorely underdeveloped, or perhaps the term had never considered the physicality of Genetically Recombined Augmentees when it was coined. Apparently the morning tumble had thoroughly revitalized him as he was energetically pulling on a pair of pajama bottoms, whistling to himself as he did. They had not experienced the deep bond connection this again, it was a decidedly physical act, even more so than the post-shower episode in the pre-dawn darkness, but it had served to slake his instinctive desire and her sympathetic want, furthermore she was intrigued as to where that reserve of energy had come from, not the energy he had expended in thoroughly wearing her out, which he had managed with great accumen, but the energy to be swiftly heading down to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.<p>

She lay still a little longer, her breathing becoming regular again, feeling a strange increased sensitivity in her body and skin. Maybe this was just the nature of the thing, the intensely intimate bonding cycle following a traditional Vulcan marriage where the mates came to know, or at least anticipate each other so perfectly. She realized how distinctly fortunate she was to have a deep affection for her mate already, it made the acclimation more soothing in most situations, but ironically, more infuriating in others. Like specifically his ability to think about warp engine protocols and diagnostic tweaks while she was lying naked against him. Clearly her understanding of human sexuality was a bit too rudimentary. She was experiencing a deep satisfaction, not at anticipating her mate's needs, but a sort of physical quenching like eating something after an intense episode of hunger. But in the subtle post-coital torpor she also felt another sensation, deep in her instinctive brain, a burning need, almost an ache for more. She wanted his body again, to feel him take her with unrestrained power and almost feral sensibility. She was just starting to run a finger along the contour of her side, marveling at the increased sensitivity and the sensations it was producing in her body, when he reappeared in the door with a steaming mug and a tall glass of tenné colored liquid. She looked at him with a weak expression, seeming to exhausted to bother covering her nudity as would have been the logical post intimacy reaction.

"Aww, are you broken, darlin'?" Trip crossed to the bed, his face loving and compassionate with just a subtle wash of amusment and self-satisfaction that seemed to be endemic of males who performed with sexual prowess. He sat down the mug and proffered a hand to her, helping her sit up as soon as he narrow fingers close around his. He sat down next to her, gently stroking her hair and cheek, his eyes soft with affection as he looked only into hers. "Here," he extended the tall glass, "Your blood sugar is low."

She furrowed her brows, cocking her head to the side in confusion.

"You have low blood sugar." He repeated.

"How do you know."

"I just...do. It's like I can feel it." He sounded blithely confused himself.

"I will comply, but I do not think-" She heard the quivering in her own voice.

"Are you alright, darlin'?" He looked concerned.

She took the glass and started to drink the contents noticing the shaking in her hands as she did so. It was sour and distinct with a subtle natural sweetness, its flavors breeched into an impossibly pronounced level of sapidity. Her hands were shaking more as she handed the empty glass back to him, she felt flushed. She noted the concern in his eyes. He placed the back of his hand on her forehead then cheek.

"Lord, you're burnin' up. I'm gonna go call MCS, we need to get you to a doctor."

"No!" she choked, "Trip...I am not ill."

"Baby, you're burnin' up with fever, and you're shakin' like a leaf if that's not sick I don't know-" he stopped mid step and swung around as her thought struck him full on, "Nah, it can't be that."

"It fits the symptoms." Her voice quavering again.

"You said it would be for another few years, at least."

"I must have been mistaken." Her voice shook and there was a distinct whimper at the end of her words.

"You don't make mistakes, T'Pol." He was worried, very worried and he was doing very little to varnish the concern in his voice. Even as he felt the fear that she was ill or injured in some way he felt waves of desire wash over him. He placed his left knee on the bed even as he began to feel himself hot from head to toe, like a sunburn only inside and radiating out. The hair on the back of his neck pricking upwards as his breathing got deeper. His next words came out as a growl, "You do NOT make mistakes."

"Aitlu ashal-sa-telsu, nash-veh." She reached for him, eyes filled with an almost sad wanting.

"This is not a mistake." He leaned in close, his voice a growl as the hair on his arms and legs stood on end, a strange almost feral lust gnawed at him as he leaned imposingly over her naked form.

"I' ashaya goh dungi-korsau." She softly pulled at his shoulders, neck craning to place soft kisses along his jaw and urging him to between accepting legs.

He could feel more than understand what she wanted him to say, what she needed him to say. He could feel the fear in her, fear at the overwhelming want she was feeling, it had been building over the last few days and now it was an all consuming fire. The increased need for the physical reassurance of his body had never been anything like this. The company of him, his presence, his thoughts, his words had been enough to sooth her in the past. A passing touch, a short shared kiss, his affectionate petting during neuro-pressure sessions had been enough to ensure the fire remained stifled embers, but something he had said or done, something she had said or done, somehow she was reaching the plak-tow and it was not time. If it had been the result of the previous night, the deep bond they had shared, or the physicality of the morning, she feared that he was right and he would not be able to touch her while they were on a tour of duty.

"I'm yours alone, T'pol."

She felt weaker than she had imagined the blood fever would have dictated. Her mate easily man-handled her up onto the bad, parting her knees and shifting her pelvis to sit against his lap. All she could do was cling to him as he did as her biology and their shared telepathic link dictated. It seemed to go on forever in her plak-tow addled mind; the things he was doing to her which brooked neither argument or complaint from her. She was so entirely overwhelmed she had forgotten what was necessary to speak English so she just babbled to him softly in Vulcan between the cries the act dictated, not even entirely sure what she was saying in her own tongue. In her mind she felt herself fall away from his, as if his mind was a shining light high on a tower of white, her instinctive Vulcan needs clutching at the walls like vines. His thoughts came to her as a distant rumble, a voice on high that echoed across the empty quietness of the small part of her mind that was still working rationally. She found herself intensely aware of every sensation in her body, how his touches, sometimes rough, sometimes soft served to send her plummeting without warning into drowning ecstasy. She felt how her body shook as muscles shook her womb greedily trying to self-infuse with his seed. She started to feel her conscious thoughts fade into a blinding white light coming from the tower and then she was nothing.

* * *

><p>Captain Jonathan Archer strode down the hall to Admiral Forrest's office with his characteristic sharp heavy steps. Each foot fall had the effect of shouting "make a hole" down the corridor as junior and staff officers cleared the way for the Captain's confident and business-like aura. It was the unspoken confidence that had carried him through the violence of the Xindi campaign not only as war fighter but also as diplomat. Task Force: Saber was already legendary, and as its commander his name was used as both shouted adulation by friends and whispered curse be foes. His skill as combat commander was confirmed time and again through the expanse, but the true coup of the operation was when he managed to convince the Arboreals, Primates, Aquatics, and Insectoids that he would much rather open a line of dialogue than orbitally bombard them into the stone-age. They had almost seemed shocked that the twenty MCS warships in orbit had not opted to open fire immediately, they were even more startled when Archer had explained the insidious nature of the spheres and offered to spare them the devastation and invariable extinction they would cause.<p>

When they offered him brevet Commodore and command of the _Degüello_ task group after the triumphant return from the expanse he had been forced to seriously consider the position. He knew he could get Reed, Mayweather, and Sato to follow him but Trip had flat out refused. He had fought Klingons, in space and on the ground and had no desire to do so again, it was perhaps understandable after what he had experienced. He was willing to accept the separation from his long time friend and engineer when T'Pol had similarly turned him down as well. It was then that he was given pause to consider whether he could reconcile breaking up the _Enterprise_ "family" for the sake of a career move. To do so would have felt unnecessarily cruel, these people had come to rely on one another for more than just operational support. The idea of playing warrior diplomat also had a bit more allure than the idea of policing the belligerent Klingons. Reaching the door he barked to the orderly, "Captain Archer to see Admiral Forrest."

The young man nodded and chimed the Admiral, "Sir, Captain Archer to see you, sir."

"Send him in."

Archer didn't wait for the next concession of protocol and opened the door before the nervous young man could say "He'll see you now, sir."

The Captain snapped his heals together and salute crisply, "Archer, reporting as ordered, sir."

Forrest returned the gesture with less discipline and bravado, "At east Jon, got news you're not going to like."

"I'm pretty accustomed to it at this point, sir." He replied with a roguish smirk.

"We're getting weird noise out of the Andorians. Apparently they have had two ships go missing near Weytahn. Right now they're circling the wagons and they're looking at the Vulcans with more than a little apprehension. We need you underway to that area as soon as possible to get this resolved. Reassure the Andorians that we want to ensure the safety of their people and integrity of their space and make sure the Vulcans know we'll do whatever we can to prevent hostilities against them."

"Si vis pacem parabellum." Archer shook his head. "We get to play the bully boys again. Wonder whose head we have to thump this time?"

"Pretty much. Same old song and dance, Jon. I'm starting to wonder if it wouldn't just be easier to annex them sometimes." Forrest replied bitterly.

"It's the burden of strength, sir. They'll come around, decide they want to come sit at the table with us. Until then, it's just tough love, the galaxy would be a pretty damn lonely place without them." Archer replied with as much absolute certainty as friendly reassurance.

"You're the man to convince them of it and I have to admit, I wouldn't like a universe where we didn't have Vulcans and Andorians to help us remember who we are. All standing liberty and leave passes will be revoked at zero four thirty tomorrow and everyone will need to report to duty stations for briefings. It's still going to be forty hours until you can get underway though so if you have stragglers among the non-staff officers, don't come down anyone too hard. It's, of course, up to your discretion as Captain, but as a word of friendly advice, a vocal reprimand should be plenty unless anyone goes seriously AWOL."

"Never been my style to sweat the small stuff, Max."

"That's probably why you're the most insufferable captain we've got..." Forrest rumbled.

"And...?"

"And...the best one too." He grinned. "Go enjoy what's left of your liberty Jon, its back to business as of oh four thirty."

"Aye aye, sir." Archer snapped out the crisp salute again which Forrest returned with equal flourish.

* * *

><p>T'Pol woke to darkness, the room she was in was illuminated only the muted blue of an indigo night sky. She could feel the soft sheets of the pillowy soft bed against her naked skin and could still smell the scents of sex in the sheets. The scent of sweat, her mate's a salty earthen odor, her own piquant and metallic. The overwhelming smell of their conjoined fluids she could still feel inside her as she moved. None of this, answered the question of where she was, she knew the bed was unfamiliar, yet her skin accepted the textures and sensation of softness as something that had graced her body before. The gentle warmth of the air, tinged with a humidity she wasn't full accustomed too. Florida, she was still in Florida, but where was Trip and why had she awoken alone?<p>

Her keen Vulcan ears detected conversation through the closed door and below. After a moment she remembered where she was. The speaking stopped, and a single phrase was uttered followed moments later by the sounds of familiarly light and quick foot falls coming up a flight of steps. The door came open allowing the vaguely yellow artificial light that bled from the down-stairs sitting area into the room. The bed sank slightly as the familiar scent of her mate filled her nose, he was sitting next to her. His callused hand reached down and stroked her shoulders tenderly, the feeling giving her some comfort against the wave of fear that was just about to rise.

"Hey, baby, are you feelin' alright?" He almost whispered the words as his touch helped keep the tide of fear from arriving.

"What..." her throat felt dry, "what happened?"

"I dunno, darlin'. But it's over now."

She rolled over and grabbed onto him with both hands, digging fingers into his clothes as the fear sensation welled up again. He gathered her into his arms and rocked her gently, his chin resting on top of her head as she clung to him as if he was the only safety from the threat of drowning.

"It's alright, darlin', it's over now. You're gonna be alright. Shhh."

She found herself having mild visual hallucinations, little creatures, black in color moving near her feet, but afraid to come any closer with her mate here. Fever dreams, or so they seemed to be. She felt an instinctive fear growing inside her, as if these illusions were tangible representations of the strange and primal feelings that swirled in her mind with sour and fetid persistence.

"There fever is gone, darlin, you're gonna be alright." He pressed his face into her hair, she felt his lips kissing reassuringly.

She closed her eyes and focused on the calming comfort that radiated from his thoughts, it was as if everything brightened and became softly warm as the residual chaotic emotions that had hung in her mind as a byproduct of her pseudo-plak-tow and had subsequently corrupted into fears, terrors, and rages faded into nothingness. She breathed more calmly, as he mentally washed her in bright, warm, serenity. Meditation would have better served her need to expunge the emotions, but his impromptu response through the bond had served to do the job admirably.

_You need to keep them a little bit, darlin'._

_Trip?_

_I'm here darlin'._

_But...how...?_

_I think the bond is getting stronger. _She could sense him smiling at the revelation.

_I have to get rid of those emotions, they are not supposed to remain._ She buried her face into his shirt.

_No, you're don't. It's part of what makes you, you. They're what make you stronger._

_The way of Vulcans-_

_Is to master the emotions, to overcome them, you can never get rid of them without excisin' a bit of your soul, darlin'. _His hand began to softly stroke the side of her face.

_Will you help me then?_

_I'd walk with you through the gates of hell if I had to, darlin._

Concealed as her face was she allowed herself to smile, _I do not believe foot expeditions into metaphysical realms will be necessary._

_Better to be prepared anyway. _Even in her mind his reply had that sarcasm tinged flat quality.

_Who were you talking with?_

There was a pause, she sensed some reluctance on his part, but he knew he could not hide it._ My parents, they came home early._

She pulled away, looking into his eyes. _Do they know?_

_Some, they know you are here, they know we have some manner of relationship. I told them you found yourself feelin' suddenly unwell and have been sleepin'._

_Why weren't you frank with them?_

_'Hey mom, dad, I'm in love with a Vulcan, we've spent the last two days having wild passionate sex in the guest room.' I don't think that'd play out to well...that is to say you'd likely skin me alive after that one._

_It hasn't been TWO days, more like a day and a half._

_Darlin', you just made another joke._ She could feel him grin.

_I should dress and be introduced. And perhaps apologize about the sheets._

_Are you certain you're comfortable bringin' that up?_

_I believe it was our intention to have offspring, unless they have been deceived into believing Vulcans are capable of asexual reproduction the origin of said offspring will be a fore-gone conclusion._

_That's two jokes._

She bit him softly through his shirt, _Am I allotted a quota then? I believe I would like to talk to them alone if I could, there are things I believe I need to say to them that should be between me and my mate's parents._

_Are you sure, darlin'?_

_Yes, I must explain and defend our intimacy to them and I must do it alone._

_I love you, T'Pol, no matter what else happens, you know that, right?_

_I have never believed it more than I do now._

She still felt a little weak as she rose from the bed. She had succeeded in meditating through her first pon farr with only marginal difficulty and the assistance of drugs to curb the hormone spikes, that was, of course before the effects of Trellium-D and the lingering damage from the Pa'nar Syndrome and now the strength and intensity of her bond with Trip, she would never be able to contain the effects again. If her episode this morning had been any indicator, the Plak-tow would kill her without him and by proxy, kill him as she was sure the despair at losing her would push him to suicide or self-destruction.

Before she had even crossed the threshold of the bathroom, Trip brushed past her and turned on the hot water in the shower, anticipating her need to clean herself before facing his parents. By the time the water had warmed he had stripped down and helped her into the shower. With diligent, gentle hands he washed her as she stood still, still occasionally quivering. The tender touch as he cleaned her head to toe served to sooth her some. The places he would never allow himself to touch were plied but chaste but affection hands as he ensured she was thoroughly cleansed. By necessity she cleaned away the remaining traces of semen as he placed an almost religious taboo against handling that part of her outside the framework of sexual passion. Every few moments, a fresh wave of concern would arise in his mind to be quickly gathered and shoved into his dark place. She suddenly understood, he thought it was his fault, that he had done something to her that had caused the fever, caused the uncontrollable desire. She didn't fully understand it herself, but knew that it was somehow important and necessary. Her body had done this of its own accord, it was not a mistake, she just wasn't entirely sure how she could reconcile it. After rinsing herself clean and exiting the shower, her mate had carefully dried her and brought her a set of clothes. As if to further reinforce the extent to which she was exhausted and incapacitated she just stared at the clothing before finally looking up at her mate with an expression he could only interpret as confusion.

He grinned brows arched high, seeming to find her rather pronounced mental incapacity amusing. T'Pol had to admit she would have found it similarly amusing had their situations been reversed but she would like to believe she would be more subtle about it.

"Seriously, darlin'?"

She pouted at him with almost child-like indignation eyes wide and doe like, lips pursed and full in an expression of part frustration, part helplessness, it was almost as if she was protesting "I'm delicate" and at the moment he could almost imagine her saying it. From the pout the expression changed to a mien of soft begging. To help her, it was his duty as her mate. She was all but helpless right now, whatever had happened had put her in this bizarre state, while he was not completely unwilling to enjoy it just a little at her expense, he would not do anything to overtly hurt or upset her. Thus he lovingly clothed her, ensuring the presentability of appearance before guiding her to the door of the bedroom and softly swatting her on the bottom.

"Go get 'em, tiger."

Out into the hallway, she felt snatches of apprehension; it was unthinkable that she would be overwhelmed by such an illogical concern. Of course, nothing that had happened this day seemed to be the least bit logical. What was the source of these fears? The parents of her mate would have been, at worst, indifferent if he had been Vulcan, but as humans there was concern that there would be disapproval, perhaps even resentment. None of which truly mattered as long as her mate still cared for her, it wasn't totally unheard of for humans to sever ties with their family unit over differences of ideology. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trip would do that for her, but at the same time she didn't want him to, not for her sake at least. She realized that it meant she clearly loved him as much as he loved her. Finding a modicum of gumption in that realization she pressed onward, down the hall, to the stairs, and descending them to the sitting room.

She saw the resemblance between father and son in the older male human immediately. He stood the moment she became visible on the steps. If his build was any indication she would have many more decades to enjoy Trip's exceptional physique. The lines that marred the face and the short grey hair were distinguished, somehow harkening to the features of aged Vulcan sages, but the piercing blue of the eyes helped remind her that he was human and further reinforced the connection to her mate. The woman to his right remained seated but looked up to her husband with a look that clearly marked her preference for their son's choice of mate. She could tell almost immediately that he was a hard man, and it would be his approval that would become a determining factor as to the success or failure of the relationship. Even if the man was coarsely insensitive or ignorant to Vulcan concepts of propriety, she must struggle to behave in a fashion that would be pleasing to humans. She reached the couch opposite the couple and stood before them for presentation.

"Mister and misses Tucker, it is a privilege to finally meet you." She was shocked by how weak her voice was.

"Sit down before you fall down, young lady." Charles the elder imparted in a stern voice.

She obeyed, finding a seat on the couch opposite the one on which they waited. Despite the steeliness in his voice, she found something about his tone soothing. He was in command, he realized it, but he did not seem overtly hostile or even critical, it was hard to ascertain exactly what it was. Despite the harsh set of his face there was something in the eyes, not anger or condescension, it was more like curiosity and a need to test her.

"So..." He rumbled, "what lines did he feed you?"

"Charles!" Mrs. Tucker protested.

"One thing I will say for Trip is he could always lay it on thick with a pretty girl, and you know that's the truth Elaine." The elder continued, looking to his wife for a moment, before fixing those mischievous blue eyes back on the Vulcan.. "Suppose he told you that you were the only one, didn't he?"

"He never asserted anything for the sort." T'Pol replied evenly, "I know full well the effect your son has on females, of multiple species. Even when his behavior is beyond reproach they tend to throw themselves at him."

"But he reeled you in anyway." He narrowed his eyes in a way similar to how her mate often did.

The mixed signals were starting to throw her, his words and demeanor were aggressive but there were subtle elements that seemed to suggest this was almost a form of play, a sparring match disguised to look like something more serious. It was in many ways a natural evolution of Trip's argument form, trying to find chinks in the armor of his opponent. If that was the case she was relatively certain she knew how to counter it. She had engaged this man's son in the same behavior many times, arguing and debating between themselves, seeming to enjoy the interactive dynamic even when it became contentious or competitive.

"I think it would be a fairer assessment to say I seduced your son." She replied with a hint of acid in her voice.

Surprisingly the strongest reaction had been in Elaine Tucker rather than her husband. Her face immediately showed concern, confusion, the question was now, precisely whose expectations were on trial here? Despite his assumption of inquisitor, T'Pol was starting to get a sneaking suspicion that he was a front-man for an agenda that was not organic to this thought patterns. As if to confirm that, his demeanor immediately changed.

The cold expression melted into a playful grin, "You're the first girl in seventeen years to pull that off."

"Which would imply that at least one other female has done the same before, what was the standing record prior to that?" T'Pol asked with measured interest.

"She was the first."

"Then I shall be the last." There was something challenging in her tone, she was turning his interrogation on its ear, playing the game that clearly passed from Father to son.

"That'd set the record."

"I am not accustomed to being bested." She countered again.

The elder's demeanor changed again, this time back to painful seriousness, "So he's just a competition for you? An ego game where you can prove you're superior to the others? I'm sure it would make an interesting read at the Science Academy."

T'Pol allowed a rare sigh, she had hemmed herself in with her own gambit. She was beginning to get wonder if Mr. Tucker did not have experience in debating with Vulcans. He was partially right, and he trapped her in that perfectly. "I will Endeavour to speak to you as a woman and not as a Vulcan. I...love your son, and I know he loves me." There, she said it. The admission of love caused her voice to crack a little, she had never even said the words to him face to face before. "I suspect you have some background with my people, mister Tucker, in which case you know how hard it is for me to say that. It is a virtual repudiation of our culture. We do not admit to love, especially not to strangers. Trip and I...we share a Vulcan mate bond, we can hear each other's thoughts, we can share our feelings. He is as much a part of me as I am a part of him. I have no intention of leaving him nor do I believe he intends to ever leave me."

Charles Tucker the elder seemed to turn into a completely different person, he looked at his wife, "Well there you go. Nothing to worry about."

T'Pol cocked a brow.

"It's my fault, sweetheart." Mrs. Tucker finally spoke, "I don't want to see my boy get hurt anymore. I had to make sure you were the real thing."

"I just get to play bad-cop. Mostly 'cause I do it better, always could. But one of these days Elaine...I swear, I'm going to get to sit here and pretend to be the good guy and let you be the bully." Mr. Tucker added.

She allowed her weakened barriers to fall, her voice cracked with a combination of physical exhaustion and failed emotional reserve. "I feel more strongly for your son that I have ever felt for anyone or anything in my life. I am incomplete without him."

"You're going to outlive him." Charles stated in a softly matter-of-fact way.

"I am sixty six Earth standard years in age, if estimations about Genetically Recombined Augmentee life spans are correct, I will likely outlive him by fifty to sixty years, at that stage of my life I would be able to deal with the solitude. Or it could be to lose him in the mate bond would kill me as well, I can accept that as a consequence. Our bond has proven to be..." She sighed softly, happily, remembering the events of the past days, "uncharacteristically strong, even by Vulcan standards. If he were to die with the bond as strong as it is likely to become, the emotional shock could quite possibly result in my death as well, I accept the possibility of that eventuality."

"Then there's nothing more for us to say about it." Charles the elder postulated, "I hope our boy makes you happy. Have you contemplated a human marriage ceremony? He wasn't exactly clear was the Vulcan ritual entailed."

T'Pol took some pride in being able to recount, even if briefly, the events of the day, "Trip defeated my intended mate in single combat in order to have me. Among my people it is called the koon-ut-kal-if-fee."

"If you share this bond, can he hear what we're saying now?" Trip's mother inquired.

"He can, 'hear' and 'see' what I think and experience mentally, my emotions and thoughts carry to him, but he cannot hear our actual conversation."

"I imagine he doesn't think to highly of us right now, raking his lady over the coals." Charles posited wryly.

"Trip has endured a great deal for me and from me." She was ashamed to admit it, but human nature dictated she be more open with his parents, "It is only right that I have to put up with some discomfort for his sake."

"Sweetheart, that's what childbirth is for." His mother commented off handedly.

"What's he doing right now?" Charles inquired, his face showing marked curiosity.

T'Pol squirmed slightly, her skin taking on shades of olive drab as his touch against the sheets brought back both party's perceptions of the events that had unfolded in the bed, "He is...changing the sheets," She replied in a weak and flustered voice, "on the bed we used."

She couldn't make eye contact as her body sympathetically reacted to the feedback their minds were creating, each thought as projected to the other about their coupling becoming amplified as the other's perceptions of the same moment added further clarity. Her attempts to contain, shelf, and cordon the thoughts failed as they blasted through her weakened reserve. Her excitement was growing, in a way that was compromising as she tightened her legs together, squirming against the heat she felt growing again and the want to run back up the stairs and into the bed for a repeat performance.

_Trip, please, help._

_Sorry, darlin', I'll do what I can_.

Thoughts of photos form medical text books, prospective warp drive subroutines, and a dead procyonid swept through his thought consciousness, subsuming and dragging away her thoughts of eroticism and intimacy, and she felt her calm begin to restore. He further focused on thoughts of severe cramps and nausea experienced during the most unforgiving moments of MARSOC as he once again returned to stripping the bed. The grim nature of his memories and thought patterns were far easier for her to suppress even if the end result was his discomfort. She reflected that she would have to extend above average patience with him in subsequent days and weeks after this cyclopean display of patience on his part.

"I suppose it's for the best that your leave got rescinded, would kind of turn the passionate week along on its ear with his folks in the next room." The elder Mr. Tucker quipped with a moue of quiet amusement at the implication of their youthfully exuberant coupling.

"Our leave was rescinded?" T'Pol was visibly confused and perhaps a bit perturbed.

"Go talk to Trip about it, sweetheart, we'll throw together a bite to eat." Mrs. Tucker injected herself into the conversation, "You have to come back and see us again."

"I find the idea of that, agreeable."


	6. Chapter 6

"Hess, grab Coyle's section and get those EPS manifolds degaussed and reset. Rostov, take Preston, Yung, and Farley's sections and make sure those new warp coils are straight down to the nanometer." Engineering was a flurry of activity, when the crews started trickling back in at 2320 hours the engineering staff had immediately reported to Trip who had immediately put them to work. As it was now, the entirety of his staff was working on making sure any issues with the retrofits would be ironed out before they got underway at 1200 hours. This was just how Trip ran his boat, most of the other departments had returned to the ship and immediately retired to their quarters or bunks for some sleep. The briefing at 0530 had been attended by all staff officers and department chiefs, upon receiving an update on their orders Captain Archer had instructed everyone to get some shut-eye. No such luck for Engineering, this was their craft, the dauntless and tireless first and last line of defense for their ship and, by proxy, Military Command Starfleet and its allies.

Kelby approached Trip with a PADD bearing his quickly crunched figures for warp field adjustments to compensate for the extra 1,735 tons of armor and bulkhead reinforcements that had been included in the retrofit and the heavy draw produced by the new shield system if they had to run with shields engaged. Tucker took the PADD and began running over Kelby's numbers, nodding, and chewing on his left thumb. Kelby was spot on with his numbers the vast majority of the time, you could almost set your watch by it, of course he would tolerate nothing less from his senior engineering staff. Reaching the end of the report he nodded emphatically.

"Looks like ya' nailed it. C'mere wanna show you somethin' I came up with this mornin'..." He paused realizing that it was "this morning" and what he had devised was actually yesterday morning, "Yesterday mornin'. Look here." He pointed to figures on the warp plasma injector manifolds readouts. "If we can tweak our containment between point one four one and point one six eight millipascals I think we can get seven seven five for an indefinite period of time."

Kelby looked at the figures and nod-shrugged, "We'd have to work the tweak at seven five until we isolate the best stability matrix, I think we can pull it off. But we'll have to be hauling ass when we make the adjustments, sir."

"I know, and if we screw the pooch on the figures the reactor will scram and we'll have to do a full restart." Trip mumbled, still chewing idly at his left thumb.

"Still, not as bad as blowing the EPS system or pressure manifolds. Worst case scenario we over-choke the engine and drop out of warp."

"Still, looks like it might be worth it."

"Hell yes, sir. And based on that we could-"

"Redline'er at eight for about thirty minutes or so." Trip cut off the lieutenant commander with a grin.

"We'll be pulling seven six without breaking a sweat for cruising. I'll start writing the modified subroutine, sir." Kelby gave a sharp engineering-expedient salute.

"Good man." Tucker replied returning the gesture.

Trip allowed himself a moment to watch the hive-like dynamism of engineering before turning back to the stack of PADDs he had in front of him for review. One of the slates had been set aside, he picked it up to once again review the memo he had been inputting. If Phlox gave the order, there was no way T'Pol would be able to avoid it. The good Denobulan Doctor could be counted on to be discreet, it was an ethical virtue he carried to almost vice-like excess. His concern about T'Pol's unusual behavior their last morning in Florida was still eating at him despite the distraction provided by the current efforts of the crew. The bond had remained as equally strong as it had been that evening, and even now the buzz of activity was bleeding over in his mind to hers. She had been gently scolding him for not getting any sleep for the past hour now, in a way that was impossible to differentiate from doting or nesting. Something about it took on a less nagging aspect and was starting to feel like gentle concern. Concern because, she loved him? He couldn't say for certain, but it was feeling that way to him and he found the idea deeply comforting.

_K'diwa, at least get something to eat._

_I'm fine, darlin'. What does K'diwa mean anyway? You've been callin' me that for the last hour, I just assumed it meant 'ornery bastard'._

There was a moment of silence in the bond, _Darlin'..._ He could almost feel her attempt to emulate the inflection he put in the word.

He smiled to himself unconsciously,_ Really?_

_It is an ancient Vulcan term, it means 'beloved'._

_That is just...insanely sweet._

_Define: easy to please. _Her amusement was evident.

_It's just that you gave me a pet name too, makes me a bit..._

_Frisky?_

_Giddy was the word I was lookin' for, darlin'. _He smiled to himself, imagining that she was anticipatory of further physical intimacy.

_As soon as we are underway, get something to eat and some sleep, k'diwa._

_Alright, alright...I will, if I don't you'll get the cap'n or XO Hernandez breathin' down my neck._

_I was actually opting for Phlox, if you had not complied I was going to notify him you were displaying self-destructive tendencies. _She countered in the uniquely matter-of-fact way Vulcans could.

_That's a low blow, darlin'._

_It's too far to reach your chin swinging from my height._

_That's ANOTHER joke, you're gettin' good at this._

She sighed through the link, but it was a self-evidently amused sigh, _Another of your bad habits that has worn off on me._

_Let's get back to work before someone notices us dopin' off._

_I have been._

_Cheater._

Before he could turn back to the queue of PADDs and reports to review and sign off on, a quintet of MCS Marines led by Lieutenant Commander Reed entered engineering. They were pushing a large wheeled weapons locker, the kind that contained battle implements specifically for the _Enterprise_ crew's defense needs or to repel boarders. Something about the way the security chief held himself told the engineer he was going to get called to task about running off with the resident Vulcan the day before. It was no secret that Reed found T'Pol pleasing to the eye, hell what man with a pulse wouldn't? They had enjoyed something of a "professional" rivalry over girls since he had met Reed six years prior on the DDG-32 _Tōgō Heihachirō_. Reed frequently edged him out when it counted, the few women Trip had genuinely liked had been taken in the English warrior-poet persona leaving him nothing but an ever extending line of infatuated distractions. Sour grapes, sweet lemons, whatever the case Reed always felt like he was behind in "the game" even though, from Trip's perspective, Malcolm was always ahead.

"Whatcha break this time, Malcolm?" Trip quipped.

"If only," The Englishman grimaced, "We're issuing side arms for the entire engineering crew."

Tucker screwed his face into an expression of contemplative discomfort, "It's lookin' that dicey?"

"Two Andorian cruisers disappear without sending a distress call, that's pretty dicey, Trip."

Reed was spot-on with the assessment, it is not so much that he has a particular aversion to wearing a side arm, he had been doing it for years, he had even been forced to fire in anger during the 47 War and Xindi campaign, but it was a sign of something more ominous than he liked. Ballistic fire weapons were still issued to many MCS Marines for ground combat, but the concerns of hull breaches, even in a ship with armor plating and bulkheads as thick as _Enterprise_ dictated that nothing but energy based weapons be issue for ship defense. Malcolm Reed was an undisputed master at ship defensive actions, during the Xindi campaign he had actually turned allowing to be boarded into a legitimate strategy to deal with particularly persistent attacking forces. Once inside Reed was an absolutely unrivaled master of coordinating defense, laying fields of murderous cross fire, flanking actions, bringing down bulkheads to isolate units from their main force. three hundred fourteen Xindi reptilians had met an early demise attempting to board _Enterprise_ thanks to Reed's dynamic combat leadership and the skill of Hayes' Marines. Of course the crew had helped, Trip had to hold off an assault on engineering for thirty eight minutes before a relief force could reach him during one particularly heavy assault in which four Reptilian troop ships had disgorged a battalion into the confines of _Enterprise_. After four hours of fighting the 86 survivors of the 330 man battalion escaped to their ships and proceeded to limp away at impluse. Of course with a full Special Forces Company of 126 of the best trained Marines produced by MCS on _Enterprise_, Reed had plenty of assets to draw on to repel the boarding action. Once they left the ship the Marines no longer answered to him and command authority reverted to Major Hayes, but when on _Enterprise_ Reed was the universally recognized master.

"Yeah, good point, Malcolm. Want me to line 'em all up? I've still got some crews elsewhere workin' on other issues."

"Won't be necessary, we'll be broadcasting general order seventeen once we get underway, thought I'd just eliminate some potential over-flow at the armories by getting whoever I can armed, now."

"That's why you're boss." Trip grinned at the seasoned Briton war fighter.

Malcolm opened a drawer on the weapons locker and produced a M27 Phase Pistol with a familiarly worn handle, a small bur of excess material projected from the bottom of the trigger guard. He extended it to Tucker who grinned ridiculously wide upon accepting the weapon. Looking to the serial number he noted the HMF designation prior to the serial number. It was the original pistol he had modified, tightening the confinement beam creating a short pulse burst weapon rather than the original long beam engagement system. This pistol had laid the groundwork for the M27A1 version that was standard issue now.

"Sir Humphrey Thornbottom, you remembered." Tucker chuckled. He had named the pistol as a joke when he had been issued the weapon at the beginning of the mission into the Delphic Expanse. Trip had a tendency to name anything and everything he came across, usually simple pet names, the engines were sometimes referred to as Linda, the nacelles were Niecey and Nancy, there were examples of his more simplified expedient names. Sometimes he applied needlessly elaborate titles such as the grav plating which he sometimes referred to as Dilong, Lord of the Near Earthly Realm, but usually only when frustrated with some malfunction associated with the system. He had originally titled T'Pol Miss Scowls McSourbritches and later taken to calling her Legs Langley after Malcolm had revealed his affinity for her "bum" in the course of one of their many misadventures during the first tour of duty. If what Reed was beginning to suspect was true, he wondered what he called her now if he was indeed sleeping with her.

"You and that side arm have been through a lot, didn't seem right letting anyone else use it. Besides, what with its sight dope being off a few inches you might actually hit something."

Tucker scowled, "Hey, I had been usin' nothin' but this baby on the range for five weeks, when y'all handed me that brand new M twenty seven A one, I forgot it was going to hit where I aimed."

"Won't be a problem now." Reed quipped, and held up a PADD, "Signature."

"Thanks Malcolm." He took the pad, signing in a slot under the serial number using a stylus then thumb-printing for positive identification.

Malcolm turned to direct the Marines, "Begin distribution."

Staff Sergeant Johnston saluted, "Aye, sir."

Once they had left to begin handing out weapons to the available Engineering crew, Reed turned back to Trip, leaning in close to not be overheard. "What's going on with you an T'Pol?"

Reed watched for a physical cue and was rewarded by seeing his friend suddenly become unerringly precise in movement and gesture. You never really could catch 'Trip' Tucker off guard, and when you made him really nervous he started to seem the most calm. He had used this to his advantage for years, but Reed knew the "tell".

"We work well togeth-"

"Calling bullshit, Trip. We saw you in Savannah."

Trip turned, he didn't look angry, his face was stonily calm, but there was no outwardly direct anger in his eyes, he was taking it very well, a fact that caused Malcolm perhaps more alarm than if his friend had been foaming-at-the-mouth enraged. "Who? How many?"

"Was Hoshi, Travis, Phlox and I. We thought we'd surprise you until we noticed you were with T'Pol. Are you two in love?"

"Yeah, yeah we are, Malcolm. We've got it bad, head over heels." Tucker spoke the words with an unearthly calm.

"When did this happen?" Malcolm hissed in a whisper, too surprised by the confirming revelation to remain composed.

"Promise me this is between you and me."

"What? Bloody hell, fine, it's between you and me."

"Swear to me Malcolm, I mean it."

"If the Captain or Hernandez find out-" The security/weapons officer protested.

"It's outside their pay grade. MCS and the High Command already know."

"What? What about the no Foreign Nationals clause?" Reed was flustered and more than a little jealous, "Alright, I swear to you, on my honor."

"We realize it during Task Force: Saber, I guess you could say we fell in love then. We're a bonded couple under Vulcan law." He said quietly as he quickly looked over and signed off on a report concerning a check of pressure seals on the ship's water reserve.

"So when you two went to Vulcan..?"

"I fought the Kal-if-fee against Koss, her intended mate, and won her. MCS signed off on it, High Command and the Vulcan scholars declared my win legitimate." He conveniently left out the revelation that their relationship had been consummated before any of that.

"Never pegged you for the cavalier." Reed grinned.

"Wasn't like that, she declared the battle in my stead. She didn't want anyone but me." He smiled to himself, once again reflecting on the fact that she only wanted him.

"So what you're saying is she picked a fight between you and her intended so you could have her?"

"Pretty much. One sec..." Tucker seemed to stop, his facial expression changing suddenly and unpredictably between indignant, pleading, contrite, then amused over the course of a few seconds. As soon as the display began it ended leaving Reed to wonder if he hadn't just had some form of seizure, "Sorry 'bout that."

"What the hell just happened?" Reed's expression was both confused and alarmed.

"Vulcans are telepathic, as her mate I am telepathically connected to her. It's like having a two-way radio in our head."

"So she heard everything I said?" Malcolm seemed alarmed.

"No, not like that, she just realized I was telling someone so I had to explain what was going on."

"So you're in trouble now, right?" Reed half smirked.

Tucker gave Malcolm the absolutely biggest most sincere 'I poked the pig' grin he had ever seen, "Oh yeah."

"Trip, I'm going to _have_ to tell Hoshi and Travis." Reed declared with almost comic emphasis.

"Fine, but I swear to God almighty, if this starts to get 'round the ship I'm comin' for all three of you. You know what I did to some of those Klingons, and I wasn't even pissed at them." Trip craned his neck forward, pointing a threatening index finger.

"Warning received, commander. With your permission, sir?" Reed saluted.

"As you were." Tucker returned the salute prompting Reed to return to the Marine detail distributing the side arms.

* * *

><p>T'Pol strode into engineering, hands clamped behind her back as she surveyed the calm buzz of activity, Trip had finished all the major repairs and diagnostics an fifty eight minutes ahead of his projected completion time of 1130 hours. His capacity to motivate his engineers was admirable, the proficiency he drilled into them through lesson and example was amazing. She was relatively certain a Vulcan engineering team could not have completed the long list of duties as quickly. Sometimes the human capacity for frantic activity proved to be a boon as everything was completed with almost frenzied attention to detail and expedient speed.<p>

Crewman first class Hector Miranda stopped in front of the Vulcan, "Can I help you with something, sub-commander?" He inquired with the required measure of professional affability.

"I have come to appropriate Commander Tucker." She noted he had already been issued a side-arm which he wore on his right hip.

"He is in his office, ma'am."

"Thank you." T'Pol stepped away, crossing to the broom-closet sized office. Inside she saw her mate standing behind his desk, looking over information on a PADD, his own sidearm was attached via a tactical thigh holster the like of which he had most likely used during his time with the Brigade Landing Teams. Only Marines and Fleet personnel with experience in ground combat opted for the less standard holster, it was more complicated to attach than the standard phase pistol holster but provided improved situational flexibility. He had tried to get her to adapt to a similar holster in the expanse but she found she had a hard time drawing the weapon from it during close action drills, so she opted to remain with the simpler but less tactically sound hip system. Once again she found herself reminded that he was a battle hardened soldier in addition to his role as engineer and practical-application academic. The image of the holster brought back memories of the time he had tried to instruct her on the use of the M12 11.27 millimeter pistol that was standard marine issue, as a qualified shore-party landing engineer he was require to remain qualified on all weapons issued to the MCS Marine branch and he proved to be particularly skilled with the archaic hand-gun system that traced its genesis to a weapon built in the Earth year 1903. It was loud and the smell of the tri-nitro-cellulose propellent compound had assaulted her nose when she had watched him practice. It was perhaps then that she had realized that she found his postures and body dynamism to be agreeable, much like now. He stood in a tight contrapposto, and she idly admired the hinted definition of muscular legs through the loose jumpsuit trousers.

_Are you starin' at my ass, darlin'._

_I am now, since you mentioned it._

_We'd better start talkin' or people are going to think we're pod people._

"Pod people...?" T'Pol cocked her right brow skyward.

"From an old horror movie." He set down the PADD and extended his hands just ever so slightly. She stepped forward and reached outward, his hands came up, cradling her elbows, the length of his forearm along hers and he pressed his forehead to hers after a quick look over her should to make sure they wouldn't be seen. The moment of quiet intimacy stimulated the touch telepathy and she felt his feelings of excitement, reservation, and concern over their mission, she also felt his total adoration and deep feelings of love tinted ever so slightly by another hint of concern. He seemed to calm from the act of the touch, and she brought her left hand up to stroke his right earlobe, feeling the happiness the gesture brought him through the touch-enhanced bond. They held for a moment before he released her and stepped back to a professional distance, maintaining the illusion or propriety for any possible passers-by.

"Did ya' see Phlox yet?" He kept his voice low.

She frowned slightly, "So that was your doing?"

"I was worried."

"Trip, I am fine."

"You are now, but yesterday..." He lowered his voice further, "it was really strange."

"Phlox is running some tests now, he should have the results in a day. Now, would you like to join me for lunch?"

"Bit early, ain't it?" He grinned at the thought of spending some time together if only thirty minutes.

"We have neither had anything to eat in roughly fourteen hours and you have not slept in at least twenty six hours."

"Alright, little light lunch might be nice. Did you need to 'appropriate' me for anythin' else?"

"Yes, I wanted to discuss a possible deflector upgrade."

"Chief Pierce!" Trip barked with military crispness.

"Sir!" A voice called from the catwalk overhead.

"Engines are yours."

"Aye, sir."

"Let's go take a look at that deflector." His face was animated, the idea of something to fix, to improve, to develop bringing out the child-like wonder in him.

"Very well." Her eyes smiled back at her mate's excitement.

Upon reaching the bridge she immediately returned to her science console and brought up a schematic image of the deflector bringing up additional windows of performance readouts and information from scans of the system. He leaned over to look at the information from over her shoulder, the data she had complied already telling the story. In space every joule mattered, entropy and waste were inevitable, but if there was a way to make a system more efficient, the power could be routed to doing some other task. Efficiency was the dogma of the engineering set, it was a stricture of the religion of performance and on _Enterprise_, Trip was the high-priest.

"As you can see, we are losing power along the edges of the deflector array."

"Yeah, its bleedin' off into the hull as entropic loss. What we need is an insulator, somethin' to keep the charge in the array itself."

Hoshi watched quietly, trying to appear as if she was still focusing on cross referencing new changes to the Universal Translator protocols to the changes she had implemented. There was absolutely nothing unprofessional seeming about the two, but she could almost see the lack of the normal tension in their body language. She had noticed that over the last eight months their arguments had grown more spirited and their body language during and after seemed to indicate they were enjoying the verbal duel. There was never any anger nor resentment, just a sense of competition as each tried to one-up the other. Today, however, they spoke to each other calmly, affably, maybe even...affectionately? And they seemed almost soothed by being close to one another, their bodies seemed relaxed, T'Pol hadn't seemed a bit discomforted by his arms so close to her, his head hovering inches away from her own.

"What we need is a...a..." he snapped his fingers a few times, "a ceramic buffer."

"Tri-...Commander, that would require a large amount of material to produce."

Hoshi's eyes widened as she heard T'Pol almost let his nickname slip. Furthermore her voice lilted in a tone Hoshi could not construe as anything but amusement.

"We don't need to cover the whole thing. Your worst bleed is at the vertices, here and here." He pointed at the screen. "We create end caps, and we can set the power in a loop, round and round the dish, just like the Kentucky Derby. Should cut the power draw by eight percent and entropic loss by 'bout seventeen."

"That would prove exceedingly effective, Commander." Hoshi swore she heard T'Pol cooing to him.

"Just doin' my job, darlin'." Hoshi physically forced her jaw shut as Tucker let that one slip, strangely she was the only one to notice. She was further surprised when T'Pol had not presented any sign of discomfort at the appellation.

"C'mon, I'll go requisition bay two and get the kiln in place to start makin' the tiles."

T'Pol rose from her seat and they crossed back to the Turbolift, entering and disappearing from view of the bridge. Hoshi was momentarily stunned by what she had witnessed, trying to mentally synthesize their display of affection. A quick look over the bridge revealed only Commander Hernandez had seemed to notice anything. Hoshi wondered if the XO would mention this to the Captain, if she had been suspicious she surely would and Hernandez was perhaps one of the best judges of moods and interpersonal dynamics Hoshi had ever seen.

"Well, they sure were in a good mood." The XO commented idly, "Beats the hell out of listening to them fight all the time."

Hoshi couldn't help but giggle, this was like some romantic comedy unfolding on the bridge. Hernandez played into the part of the oblivious boss so well it couldn't have been written better**. [Author's Note: Holy Ironic Sentence, Batman!]** Hernandez turned to face Hoshi, her expression showing a kind of pedantic amusement.

"You find it humorous, miss Sato?"

"You have to admit, ma'am, there is a certain degree of sexual tension in their arguing."

"Sure, but there is no way our 'sexual vanilla' could work his stuff on T'Pol. I think they enjoy the arguing, but there's nothing more to it than that." She paused, then continued with a chuckle as something seemed to cross her mind, "If it was anyone OTHER than T'Pol I think we'd be looking at a section fifteen hearing."

"Sexual Vanilla" the nickname Mayweather had applied to Tucker during their tumultuous first tour of duty where they couldn't turn around without some female of one alien species or another throwing herself at their Mr. Tucker. It was a widely used joke on the bridge among the junior officers who had abstained from using it in front of the senior officers to avoid seeming insubordinate. The one time they had let it slip in front of Captain Archer they had been forced to endure a long worded and calmly spoken homily about the respect that Tucker, specifically, was due. The Captain seemed to have no issue with whatever other teasing was directed in their Chief Engineer's direction, but when it came to his non-deliberate propensity for making females of extant species swoon over him, it was off limits.

Hernandez's use of the term was just another illustration as how she considered herself "one of them" in terms of the level of familiarity within the chain of command. Captain Archer was "poppa"; the father-god-ultimate-authority-figure who was infallible and ineffable Lord of the ship. Hernandez was like an ultimate step-mom, one you could joke with and talk about things you could never discuss with a biological parent. In this dynamic Trip and T'Pol had been big brother and big sister respectively, they knew more, had seen more, had experienced more and listening to their wisdom was, nine times in ten, your best bet. The fact that big brother might be sleeping with big sister would force a change to the family model they had used up to this point to keep things from getting creepy.

Hernandez sat up a bit straighter suddenly, "Wow...that would be crazy if she did fall for him. Nah, couldn't happen, she's Vulcan and nobody is quite as illogical on a daily as mister Tucker."

Mayweather cut eyes over to Hoshi and bit his lip to fight down the grin. Hoshi dug her fingers into her thigh as she found herself having to similarly fight back the urge to laugh, if Hernandez only knew what they had seen at that tapas bar in Savannah. Of course it was possible that nothing further had occurred after they left, she could have been curious about what a human date was like, and she was more comfortable with Trip given their constant and spirited debate. Cultural exchange, yeah, that was it exactly, but it didn't explain the way she looked at him. Those had to be the most pronounced "fuck me" eyes she had ever seen, and she had some experience with giving those kind of expressions during her boisterous college years. Maybe fluid exchange was a component of the cultural exchange in that particular situation.

The next words that left Hoshi's mouth almost made her want to punch herself, she wasn't sure why they slipped but they did and she found herself feeling like a simulacrum of Judas, "Opposites attract."

Hernandez loosed a crowing laugh, "And in the case of matter and antimatter, blow each other to hell and gone!"

Captain Archer strode onto the bridge from his ready room, looking over the bridge crew, there was a sort of ennui on the bridge as everyone tried to occupy themselves waiting for the 1200 order to get underway. Noting the discontent with needless waiting he decided to spice things up just a bit. He approached the navigator/pilot who was even now running double checks of all his flight subroutine macros against the new performance standard for the ship. This was something he could easily do while they were at warp on their way to Weytahn.

"Mister Mayweather, ever left system inverted?" Archer asked, the devilish hint of a smirk at the left corner of his mouth.

"Can't say as I have, sir." Travis was grinning at the prospect.

"Hoshi?" Archer inquired.

She had already pulled up system transit regulations and was checking, "Don't see anything in the regulations that says we can't, sir."

"Let's do a pass in review of Lagrange one and two, inverted if you please, Mister Mayweather. Let's go give Gardner a heart attack."

"Aye, sir." Mayweather's fingers flew over his console controls as he rotated the ship on its axis. In the windowless bridge it was impossible to even tell they were moving as internal gravity plating held everything in place at the same 9.8 meters per second constant.

Hernandez looked at Archer with an interesting expression, four parts amused to one part each disapproving and pedantic. "You are something else Jon..."

"Someone has to set the record for first ship to leave system or pass in review inverted, why not us?" He joked with the you-can't-be-mad-at-me smile he seemed to be the patent holder on.

* * *

><p>Phlox looked at the results of the test a second time, something had to be wrong. Her hormone levels were hyper elevated, neurotransmitters flooded her system, her temperature was still elevated and her green blood cell count was depressed. It was almost as if she was ovulating, which didn't strike him as particularly strange except for the fact it seemed to be out of sync with the normal Vulcan female cycle of ovulating once every one hundred seventeen days. Her last cycle hadn't even been a full month ago based on her monthly check-up and even then the build up to ovulation was a slow process that happened over two weeks producing no noticeable side effects in the female. If Mr. Tucker had noted the strange symptoms it meant the ovulation was aberrant.<p>

"Mister Tucker noted..." Phlox stopped for a moment, contemplating what he had just thought. How had Tucker been aware of T'Pol's strange symptoms? How had he noticed the fever? Another puzzle piece clicked in his head and he suddenly remembered the "generous" information upload courtesy of the Vulcan Medical Academy two months prior. In the upload there had been a rather large section on the Pon farr, Plak tow, and pregnancy dynamics of Vulcans. At the time he had assumed that High Command deemed it necessary for _Enterprise_ to possibly deal with situations involving this aspects of Vulcan biology and culture. Then he remembered the evening in Savannah, an incident he had put out of his mind for the sake of privacy.

He immediately started searching his database for anything regarding the Vulcan neuro-sympathetic system . Vulcans had an unusual capacity to manifest physical ailments as the result of mental distress. He had never heard anything similar to this occurring among the species, but where there lay precedent... First he was going to have to get some straight answers, and that was going to require some pressing. He was not eager to crow-bar his way into their private life, but if T'Pol was having somatoform reactions it was medically pertinent.

Pages of references served to compound the confusion. Each reference linked to some medical article of scholarly paper. No, if it was ovulation this was reproductive, might as well go ahead and read over the information regarding Plak tow, it was definitively linked to Vulcan reproduction, it was here that he would have to start seeking answers. The article was loaded with extensive platitudes that sought to explain everything in context of history, steadfastly refusing to even broker the thought that perhaps Vulcans did experience emotions like love, desire, lust, or a desire to dominate. Drivel, incessant drivel, inexcusable drivel. Finally, at about fifteen paragraphs and seven pages in he found something promising. Plak tow could be induced in one partner by the other as part of satiating the blood fever. It was part of the telepathic process.

The Denobulan crossed to the ship's intercom system and depressed the locate-call button. "Phlox to Commander Tucker."

There was a moment's pause then from the other end, "Yeah, doc?"

"I would like to see you in sickbay at your earliest convenience." He replied with faux affability, he mustn't worry or frighten him away now.

"I'll be there in just a tick."

Another muted voice came forth, the inflections and tone similar to T'Pol's, "You can wait until you have finished eating."

"One sec doc." His voice muted as he replied to his companion, "I'm fine, I ate somethin' and I'll be off duty to get some sleep in seven hours."

"Commander?" Phlox inquired politely.

"On the way, doc."

Phlox paced the sickbay slowly, crossing from one side to the other then sharply turning to begin the slow saunter back across from whence he came. How would he address this? There were entirely to many things to consider as Tucker made his way to sickbay. He began to wonder if perhaps the human wasn't the victim of some elaborate duplicity. Perhaps there was a measure of uncharacter "openness" in T'Pol's relationship with her Vulcan mate, a political marriage of sorts. Humans did occasionally have elaborate and esoteric sexual habits and preferences, perhaps their perceived relationship just existed as an emotional component. Too much to consider and he was standing right in front of him now.

"What's up Doc?" He chuckled at himself as if what he had just said somehow was amusing.

"Commander, at what point did you note the symptoms in T'Pol?"

"Yesterday mornin'."

"And where were you when it happened?"

His face took on a stony quality and his lips drew thin. "Florida."

Phlox sighed, there was no easy way to put it, "Commander, do you know if T'Pol has had any contact with a Vulcan in the past fifty hours, possibly her mate?"

"I'm pretty positive she didn't have any contact with a Vulcan." He said the words slowly, cautiously.

"That would include her mate?"

Tucker paled considerably, prompting Phlox to speak again, "Mister Tucker, it's not my position to judge. Voyeurism in the proper context is a safe and healthy way to satisfy one's sexual desires. It would seem to me that you are at least an accepted part of the arrangement in some way as you were allowed close enough to T'Pol to note her physical symptoms and, based on the location, I have to assume they accepted you as an observer."

"Doc..."

"There is no shame in it Mister Tucker, T'Pol clearly feels very strong feelings towards you if she is willing to allow you to be privy to her mating cycle."

"Doc..."

"Please, Trip, it is alright to admit it, but I have to have the information in order to properly diagnose the issue."

"Doc, I AM T'Pol's mate." He blurted it out.

Phlox was momentarily flabbergasted, it was totally unheard of, there were no records of any sort that indicated that it was even possible for humans to form a proper mate bond with a Vulcan. "Then how..."

"How what? What's goin' on, Doc." The engineer was allowing his exasperation show.

"Have you and T'Pol been having..." He bounced his shoulders in a spastic shrug, "sexual relations?"

His face once again became tight lipped as he chewed on the inside of his lower lip, muscles bunching along his jaw. "Yeah, yeah we have."

"Have you had anyone else involved in said activities?"

Trip looked appalled, "What? No! Of course not!"

"Have you had sex with T'Pol recently."

"Define recently..." Trip was being evasive.

"Within the past forty eight hours."

"Yes."

"That is approximately when the symptoms started?"

"Okay, look Doc. We made love twice two nights ago, then twice the following mornin', that's when her symptoms started bein'...pronounced. She started burnin' up hot, shakin' like a leaf, and pawin' at me like a kitten in her first heat."

"And then..."

"Well that was the second time we...that morning...well...look I'm not even sure what I had going on in my own head either." He blushed a bright ruddy-pink shade.

Phlox looked introspectively into the corner for a moment, trying to reconcile the medical problem vis-à-vis the information he had just received. He glanced up seeing how concerned the young human's face was.

"What is it, Doc?"

"How regularly are you and T'Pol...intimate?"

"Intimate or sex, Doc?"

"Sex."

"Last time, prior to the other day, was Tuesday, February fifth of this year. "

"Mister Tucker, that was five months ago!"

"I know." He wore a wan expression and shrugged as if to say there was nothing for it.

"And your first sexual encounter?"

"Friday, December twenty eighth, twenty one fifty three." His eyes got a faraway look, almost moony.

"You are very specific with these dates Mister Tucker." Phlox gave him a dubious look.

"I will never be able to forget."

"I don't suppose you would know about T'Pol's sexual history, you would be much easier to speak to in the regard giving the Vulcan tendency for privacy."

"Me, December twenty eighth, twenty one fifty three. What is going on here, Doc?"

"T'Pol is...ovulating."

"Yeah, mammals do that..."

"Vulcan females ovulate approximately three times a standard year, once every one hundred seventeen days. Except for Pon farr that is the only time they ovulate. Her last ovulation cycle was twenty four days ago, she is not SUPPOSED to be ovulating yet." Phlox was clearly flustered by a medical mystery that was outside of his scope.

"Wait...so you're tellin' me we don't have to wait every seven years?"

"Seven years for what?" Phlox was clearly still exasperated.

"Babies..."

"What? No, of course not! The Vulcan race would not be able sustain itself if breeding between partners could only occur once every seven years!"

"Then why did she say every seven?"

"Many Vulcan females do not track their estrous cycle, compared to many other species it is far less perceivable. Most of the symptoms can be explained away as fatigue, there is no accompanying bleeding as to do so would be wasting fluid, so many tend to completely overlook the fact it has occurred." Phlox explained in his quick almost theatrical way.

"How do you know when her last cycle was?" Trip narrowed his eyes, feeling twinges of territorial defensiveness.

"I keep track of everyone's hormonal cycles on the ship. Your reproductive health is part of your overall health. If you'd like I can tell you when your monthly hormone surge occurs, mister Tucker."

"Thanks, I'll pass on that Doc, rather it stay mysterious."

"None of this explains why she is ovulating now, without another Vulcan's Pon farr to induce Plak tow in her..."

Trip raised an intervening hand, "Wait a sec Doc...how does that work exactly?"

"The Vulcan entering Pon farr will cause his or her mate to enter Plak tow through the telepathic bond at which point they reach Plak tow."

"The bond...that's it." Tucker said, his face painted with sudden understanding.

"Mister Tucker?"

"Nothin' Doc." He grabbed the Denobulan on either side of his head and planted a huge loud kiss on his forehead, "You're beautiful Doc! Thank you!"

With that the engineer strode from sickbay leaving Phlox to contemplate what it all meant. Had Tucker induced Plak tow in T'Pol? No, that was impossible, that would necessitate him being able to actually enter Pon farr himself, which biologically he could not. Humans didn't naturally have telepathy, so it wasn't possible that it had been a counter-sympathetic reaction. Though... If T'Pol's sub-conscious desire to experience a Plak tow type interaction with Trip was strong enough and projected through their telepathy, it was possible that it could be counter-projected to T'Pol, inducing the neuro-biological reaction. It is, of course, all nonsensical, even if Mr. Tucker was aware of T'Pol's telepathic presence it isn't like he would be able to project his own thoughts or feelings across it.

* * *

><p><em>Sorry 'bout lunch.<em>

_I trust Phlox had something interesting to discuss?_

_Darlin'...light of my life, _He went silent a moment, _You're ovulatin' that's what it all was, I made you have a mini Plak-tow._

She stood up suddenly from her station on the bridge. Her reaction was instinctive, physically recoiling from the mental shock of it. Her mate, a human, had induced plak tow. It all made sense, every symptom she had exhibited that morning conformed to the process of Pon farr, hyper accelerated. It would explain why he suddenly felt her drop in blood sugar, why she had been completely lost in her desire for him, why she had lost consciousness after the fact and slept for so long. She found herself thrilled at the thought that her mate would be able to share the plurality of Vulcan experience with her, meditation, the bond, perhaps even the mind meld. But if she lost him, she would have to seek Kolinahr to avoid the madness the pain would cause her. At least forty years but he could live another eighty, could she endure the destruction of herself by surrendering the lion-share of her katra to the emotional encephalectomy of pure logic? Yes, yes she could.

"Sub-commander?"

She shot her head upwards, realizing she had been breathing uncontrollably hard, feeling the flush in her skin. The entire bridge crew was staring at her as Archer lilted again.

"Is there something wrong, sub-commander?"

"I thought I saw an arachnid of a particularly venomous variety cross my console." Her first time lying outright to Archer.

"Must have gotten on with the retrofit team. Archer to Commander Tucker..."

"Tucker here." Came the distorted reply.

"Trip, make a note that we need to fumigate the bridge."

There was a pause, "Hoshi, the bugs are in the SYSTEM not the bridge."

Archer chuckled while Hernandez rolled her eyes, stifling the grin, "No Trip, sub-commander T'Pol saw a spider."

"Oh she did, huh? Alright, I'll get some teams right on that. Anything else, sir?"

"If you ever wanted to moon Admiral Gardner now would be the time, we're just about to pass Lagrange two, then we'll get the hell out of here."

"Copy that, sir, headin' back to engineerin' now."

T'Pol returned to her seat and made a show of browsing through reports about gravitational telemetry around the L2 station. She focused through the chaos in her mind to find the bond again. She felt him, saw him, standing there magnificent and radiant to her mind's eye, her beloved.

_Trip..._It was almost a cry.

_It's alright, baby. That spider won't hurt you._

_There is no spider!_

_I knew there wasn't. Are you alright? I guess that was a lot to hit you with._

_Taluhk nash-veh k'dula, __k'hat'n'dlawa._

* * *

><p>"I fully realize that they were not Vulcan weapons, our analysis came to the same conclusion." Thy'lek Shran paced the bridge of the <em>Tu'sal<em> uncomfortably. It wasn't bad enough that two of their Battle Cruisers had been lost, but now he was having to treat with Vulcans on the bridge of one of their combat cruisers. This Captain Suvak was not helping the matter either, he exhibited all of the cold indifference that Shran loathed about these people. At least the Vulcans hadn't tried to abuse the situation and move additional ships into the Weytahn neutral zone.

"Commander Shran, the earth ship will be here in a day. Nothing more can be accomplished at this juncture, it would be logical to ensure that the safety of Paan Mokar...Weytahn, is uninterrupted."

Shran sneered, "You were the one who suggest I come to your ship, Vulcan."

"To review our findings, which corresponded with your own. It is therefore illogical to remain here when defense would be better served by your returning to your cruiser." Suvak replied with magnificent dead-pan.

"How can you be sure this Earth ship will have any greater success than we have had?"

"The humans are a resilient and resourceful people, surely the Imperial Guard has briefed you adequately on them." Suvak almost seemed taken-aback, Shran considered it a victory.

"I have heard they are strong, fearless, fair...they don't play favorites."

"Which is why my people have come to trust them. I find them hard to tolerate as individuals, they are mercurial and emotional beings, but they are also pragmatic. It is my belief that you will find them agreeable. I similarly believe that continued antagonizing between we two will solve nothing."

Shran let a bitter grin onto his face, "That would be...logical. Very well, I will return to the _Kumari_. I hope your praise of these humans is well earned."

Just as he turned to leave the sensor console on the bridge began to let out a low trilling sound. The Vulcan bridge officer attending the device looked down.

"Captain Suvak, a single D'kyr class cruiser is dropping out of warp, I am reading heavy damage. It is hailing us."

Suvak nodded, Shran froze in place his expression awash in apprehension.

"This is Captain Suvak of the _Tu'sal_, report."

The image of the heavily damaged bridge of the Vulcan cruiser was garbled by static and data projection errors. A Vulcan male with a horrific gash opened up in his scalp was inches in front of the screen.

"An armada...heading for Vulcan, it has to be the Romulans!" His logical reserve had failed in the face of what he had witnessed. "There are too many ships, we have to contact MCS! Romulans are heading for Vulcan!"

The screen abruptly cut out as the signal was lost. The D'kyr cruiser was thoroughly shredded with countless hull breaches and fires raging in the decks that still had atmosphere to leak, the tendrils of flame occasionally licking at space only to die fractions of a second later. Horrific holes, similar to those Shran had seen on the wreckage of the two Andorian cruisers had been chewed into the ship.

"Sir, their systems are failing rapidly." Another Vulcan, clearly a science officer, stated.

"Can we beam the survivors aboard?" Suvak inquired, a bit of worry slipping into his otherwise steely voice.

"We are experiencing to much interference."

"Shran to _Kumari_, prepare to beam any survivors you can to our medbay." Shran turned to Suvak, "We are accustomed to dealing with interference patterns with our transports. You have my apologies Vulcan...it seems we are kin in tragedy, today."


	7. Chapter 7

Awaking suddenly he became keenly aware of the gentle weight against his right upper arm, the scent of her hair greeting his nose gently. His waking mind touched hers, and she sympathetically awoke, rolling over to look into his eyes. The flecked bistre of her eyes burning into the glaucous streaked palatinate blue of his. Neither said a word, neither thought a word, they just stared into each other on the narrow bunk in his cramped quarters. No passions had disrupted the confines of their tenuously impromptu marriage bed, no desire had spurred them to coupling, instead they just lay close and held onto one another in wordless comfort, through the night and into these early hours of the morning. She would have to rise soon, return to her quarters before the changing of the shift. Reaching up she ran her fingers gently across the stubbled jaw and spoke softly.

"What time is it?"

"About zero four fifteen." He whispered.

"It is agreeable that you have taken me through my first Plak-tow, k'diwa."

"It couldn't have been real, I'm not Vulcan." He whispered again, as if they had to keep their togetherness secret from hidden ears.

"It was my desire manifest through you, and in turn you projected it back into me again. I desired the full extent of the mate bond, and you succeeded in providing for it."

He wasn't sure why they were speaking out loud, knowing it could all be said in their head, maybe the act of saying it, of forcing the vocalization made it that much more real to her.

"I don't understand, darlin', what desire specifically?"

"It is not logical to wait three years to conceive. I found the idea of carrying your child agreeable, so subconsciously I used you as a conduit to induce an abridged pon farr. If I am to conceive it would logically increase our bond."

He smiled teasingly, eyeing her up and down, he wanted to wring the concession from her, force her to tell the totally unvarnished truth. He knew there was more than logic at play, but rather than go prying around in her head to find it, he would make her say it.

"So it was only logic, huh?"

"It was logica-"

He presses his lips into her, parting them to taste her mouth, his lower lip dexterously playing against hers, taking the sensation of his mouth against hers and projecting it to her. She whimpers softly as her hands come up to his chest, fingers curling against him. He pulls her close against him, his right hand snaking into her short hair, massaging her scalp while the left reaches under her silken night-shirt to caress the naked skin of the small of her back.

When he releases her lips, T'Pol gasps as the sensation rolled up and down her limbs, passed through her body then out like sparks of bliss that fade with the flush of the contact. "I want to have a child with you, Trip."

He grinned, "See, that wasn't so hard to say, was it."

She gives him the wide eyed pout he has come to adore, "Abusing our bond to acquire information from me is inappropriate."

He can think of about fifty smart-ass comments to make at the moment, but the desire to fence with her just isn't there, he'd rather just lie there, holding her close talking to her softly, "T'Pol, I'm not Vulcan, I know you've got emotions and feelin's a-plenty, you can talk to me about it. Think of me as a second form of meditation, let it out with me, and don't worry about logic failin' you. After all, isn't that what a mate if for?"

"It is rational to assume that our bond will place additional stressors on my composure, and that the best solution is to resolve any emotions that we can between the two of us."

"There ya go."

"However there is the issue that your species is not accustomed-"

"T'Pol."

"-to this type of telepathy, and the additional-"

"T'Pol."

"-stressors on your neural pathways could possibly-"

"T'Pol."

"-be detrimental to your-"

"Sugar bottom!"

This last gem managed to adequately catch her attention and stymie any further expounding on her concerns. She demurely lay still, her eyebrows challenging him to provide an adequate rebuttal .

"What do you think of humans? Not the official line from High Command, what do you think?"

"You are impulsive, arrogant, mercurial, and head strong."

"And...?"

"You are also capable of being disciplined to a fault, fearless, fair, iron willed, and remarkably stalwart."

"So, based on that, do you think you can trust in me, just a little?"

She opens her mouth, pauses, eyes rolling up and to the side as if accessing a component of her memory, then almost squeaks out, "Very well."

* * *

><p>Archer balled and relaxed his hand into a fist, repeating the act again and again. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, like sudden negative-G induced nausea he could feel it all the way into his knees and elbows, like a sudden urge to vomit violently. He wasn't sure why but he felt rage. The Vulcans could be crass, insensitive, even obnoxious, but he would not anymore want to see them dead than he would want to see Earth destroyed. The revelation about the Romulan invasion fleet had fortunately reached them before they arrived at Weytahn. The estimates of the Vulcan ship that had survived the attack was that the Romulans could only manage warp 6 and were probably cruising at 5.5 to ensure any of their slower transports weren't separated from the battle group. Even if MCS stripped Earth of its defense flotillas and they pushed the <em>Potemkin, Revenge, <em>and _Huron_ out of dry dock, it would still be 6 days before any other reaction force could reach Vulcan. He had half a day's lead and the best engineer in Starfleet, with any luck they could make Vulcan in four days and help shore up the defenses until the assembling Task Force: Dragoon could reach them. Reliance on Tucker's engineering skills and Reed's gun crews they stood a chance to hold off the Romulans until relieved.

"Archer to engineering." He said the words softly, the way he did when the killing rage started to overcome him.

"Engineerin'!"

"Commander Tucker...what can you give me on the engines." His voice was again soft.

Trip knew what this meant, the rage was on him, he wasn't sure about what, but at times like this it was best to achieve one's magnum opus. It was perhaps the one thing augmentees could legitimately call a burden. At some point prior the development of the first series of Augmentees in the 2020s, they had discovered a way to alter the low-expressing MAOA, creating the so called "killing" gene. It was the brutal, morally relative center piece of Augmentee war capacity. It activated under the correct stressors, flooding the brain with serotonin and the body with Dehydroepiandrosterone, the spike in aggression allowed Augmentees to commit almost unthinkable acts of violence against an enemy in combat. Trip knew this first hand, having remembered vividly the mayhem he had inflected on attacking Klingons and a particular Xindi reptilian whose lower jaw he had ripped off in the process of trying to break its neck. The gene was just one component in close quarters and combat drill. Catch-words were utilized to divorce the act from reality; kill became reduce, enemy became belligerent.

"Sir, we've got a protocol in place that can sustain warp seven point seven five with warp eight for about forty five minutes. But..."

"I don't like pregnant pauses, Commander."

"It's risky sir, we could scram the reactor. It would knock us out of warp and restart would take about an hour."

"It won't blow the engine?"

"No sir."

"And it would get us to Vulcan faster?"

"Vulcan? I thought we were headin' to..." He stopped, "Yes, sir. Would cut the trip down to about four days."

"Do it Trip. Get me eight as long as you can and once you can't hold that anymore, get me seven seventy five."

"Roger that, sir. Sir, if I may, what the hell-"

"Vulcan is about to be invaded by a Romulan armada, Trip."

He was silent for a moment, when he replied his voice echoed the brutal mental calculus of Archer, "I'll give you eight for at least an hour sir, even if it kills me."

* * *

><p>T'Pol suddenly felt the presence in the bond. It wasn't Trip, not in a way she knew him. She stood, using all her willpower she made it to the Turbolift and inside before collapsing against the wall with a gasping sob. It was as if the dark place he hid things in was part of his presence now. She felt unspeakable violence radiating from him, something terrifying to even her strongest elements of Vulcan willpower. Murderous intent rolled off his bond-image, passing over and around her, moving outwards and away. He existed in inky blackness as implacable as the ferocious pragmatism that was the instinct of his people. The vengeful wisps, each carrying in their smoke-like coils hundreds of whispered voices, angry and vengeful. But as they touched her, rather than destroy they warmed and numbed her. It was protection; a hyper pronounced instinct to ward her.<p>

_Trip?_

The response as the dark place/Trip looks at her is a deafening blast of sound; hateful and violent. It does not brook her desire for conversation, this thing in her mate's mind seems to want nothing more than to protect her by folding her into itself and brutally eradicate anything else. She knows the horror of it will destroy her, the shock of seeing inside this part of the human soul could kill her outright as her mind and body fails to cope with the pseudo-kolinahr of human instinct. The horn/blast/roar strikes her again as she freezes in mental terror at the primeval inevitability, and all she can do is shudder uncontrollably.

_T'Pol, get away from it._

_Trip?_

_Get away from it, it's not for you, you can't look in there, walk away from it._

_I can't, I'm...afraid._

_I can't make it go away, T'Pol, you can move, you can walk away from it. It won't follow you._

_I'm scared, Trip!_ She is a child again, wailing in fear at the sounds of a sand fire storm in the night. Unbidden she feels herself revert to the child, the same fears, the lack of logic. The knowledge of a woman trapped in this effigy of her mind crying for mate, father, or anything that could save her from this monster. Her legs wouldn't work, her arms couldn't move, all she could do was sit and scream and sob and cry tears of the emotional excess that only existed in Vulcan children when something shattered their fragile world. The walking horror that she knew was her mate's instincts passed over her and she froze completely as she experienced the faded edge of the cyclopean engine of wrath. The same voices carried on the dark wisps that screamed and bellowed sounds of hate and gnashing teeth whispered softly in her ear.

_Friend. Cherish. Love. Protect. Cover. Friend. Wife. Love. Protect._

The words echoed softly as tender whispers as she felt the sensation of her fists...no, they were his fists, crushing bone, the sickening texture of flesh rendered to pulp as fists drove the disparate pieces of some being's skull back into its brain pan. The same hand digging into a throat, fingers curled into wrathful talons that forced skin and muscle to give before the pressure then the soft and slippery warmth of blood bathing the hooked phalanges as a chunk of muscled tissue, hollow and essential, came away in the hand. She felt a litany of bones cracks, joints pop, flesh and muscle smacking against knuckles. The sounds of high speed projectiles slapping into flesh that could not yield with enough speed. The smell of blood, bile, cordite, and offal. All those horrible things he remembered but tucked away, and still the comforting whisper continued.

_Love. Protect. Wife. Touch. Adore. Love. Cherish. Protect. _

Again the angry blast of noise emanated from the thing, carried forward and muted as it moved past and away and the world went white before her eyes.

* * *

><p>Trip grit his teeth as he felt T'Pol disappear from the bond, the jolt of pain going down his spine, up into his skull and through his limbs felt like it was trying its hardest to knock him unconscious. He bit his tongue, hard, feeling blood immediately. The new source of pain distracted him from the pain coming from the sudden bond disconnect and he looked back at the pressure containment readout. Kelby, Hess, and Rostov were all sitting in wait like overly eager junior college third-base coaches. As they watched the engine creep slowly to warp 7.65. Trip could feel the subtle vibration in the engine housing, less than a few micrometers but it would build unless they could find the perfect containment ratio that would allow the steady flow of reaction mass at a speed high enough to allow a constant feed of matter and antimatter to the fussy reactor.<p>

"Adjusting to point one for two."

No noticeable change, the engine was now reading warp 7.67. He quickly ran a calculation, the results displeased him, they showed no significant change in warp reaction until he got into the unknown zones between .153 and .164. They couldn't play the creeping game if they wanted to get 8.0 for the Captain.

"Adjusting to point one five five."

The speed immediately jumped along with just about everything else. The Chop had gotten pronounced but they were registering Warp 7.73 as fractions of the warp speed register slowly ticked higher and higher leading towards the 7.75 they had hoped for. His fingers began to fly over the controls as he set in another set of adjustments, fighting against the warp field turbulence.

"Adjusting to point one five nine."

The chop got worse, again as the reactor suddenly registered Warp 7.86, they were getting frighteningly close, but they were playing with very dangerous physics and dynamics now. The warp field turbulence could possibly cascade, damaging the ship. He fought to concentrate despite the growing sense of panic he felt at T'Pol's absence in his mind. Her panic and fear before she disappeared, the cries and screams that had come from her. He had to discover some way to suppress the cold murderous instinct, to hide that dark place deeper where she couldn't wander to close to it. _Oh, Darlin' please be alright, please talk to me if you can hear me._

Point one six oh."

"Mayweather to engineering, I am at seven point nine two, but I am starting to lose warp field integrity."

Trip could feel the chop increase slightly again, but something was different this time, it was more like a sympathetic vibration, mostly in the grav plating, something was working, the engine was straining less, they were close.

"Kelby! Get on the intermix ratio! Hess, Rostov, make sure we've got clean transfer on the warp plasma. Just hold it a little longer, Travis." Tucker barked, all but ignoring the growing heat in the confines of Engineering.

"Aye." the comm. from the bridge remained open but silent.

_T'Pol, baby, please talk to me, can you hear me?_

"Point one six two."

"Re-optimizing intermix ratio, I'll follow you up." Kelby shouted back over the frenzied thrumming heart-beat of the engine.

What happened next startled everyone, the ship seemed to buck like a sudden choke in an engine as it was throttled up, the acceleration was immediately palpable. The numbers climbed slowly, ten thousandths, thousandths, then hundredths of a warp factor; 7.9211, 7.9213, 7.9304, 7.9451.

"Pont one six three."

The ship seemed to jump again forcing the chief engineers eyes over to a warp field reading. The Field itself was changing in shape, taking on a more conical shape, the sharp tip in line with the nose, and a large wide flat back end. That was it, drag...sub space collapsing in to fill the sudden void at the back end of the cone was shaking the outermost rear edge of the warp field. If they could just bulge the end, create a boat tail, it was just like a bullet.

"Hess! Adjust exhaust venting. We need to gradually force the majority of the venting to the forward coils with a two point five percent decrease descending." Tucker bellowed in the now withering heat and painfully noisy engine room.

"Aye, sir!"

"Engineering, Mayweather! Seven point nine seven...seven point nine eight...seven point nine nine five..."

Trip felt a sudden thunderous heart-beat, he could feel the sudden moment of tension on the bridge, as they made history, done what had never been done in known space. A moment of joy and pride in himself and his crew doing the impossible, making it work. Then to have it all dashed to pieces as he remembered the terrified wailing of T'Pol in his mind and the fate of her world, her people, her mother. The anger he felt at it all threatened to wash back over him again until he remembered what it had done to her, and he fought it down, the process of doing so almost painful.

"Eight point one! Warp field stabilizing!" Mayweather shouted into the intercom. "You did it, sir! You did it!"

A cheer went up through engineering, they had made history; not in a test, not in a shakedown cruise, they had done what no one else had done heading into a combat-imminent situation without weeks of speculating and theorizing. Just another in his resume of impossible feats, and it didn't matter to him one iota at the moment.

"Cap'n, We're goin' to need to start ventin' waste heat through the ship, temperature is climbin' pretty high right now in engineerin'."

"How bad is it, Trip?" Archer's informality belied his intense command presence.

"It's about noon-ish in Death Valley in August down here right now, if we start ventin' I imagine we can get it down to El Paso in June."

There was a muted chuckle, "Understood, proceed as you see fit, and I'd like to see you in my ready room at your earliest convenience."

"Aye, sir."

He walked over the Kelby, his senior engineer was dripping sweat, fingers flying over keys as he examined read outs. He looked up noticing Trip's approach and side stepped a second without saying a word so the chief could examine the information he was quickly compiling. Trip looked down at the data, it was pleasing and disappointing at the same time.

"Sure this is all right?" Tucker queried.

"Look who you're talking too."

"So we're sucking down reaction mass at one hundred fifty percent of normal and the temperature is going to stay at about a hundred ten down here. But how long can we sustain?"

"Sir..." Kelby looked at him in a mixture of incredulity and admiration, "You did it, this is Warp eight flight, we can sustain it as long as we can keep people conscious down here and as long as we still have reaction mass."

He pulled up another set of figures, "Vibration levels, engine heat, coil integrity, dylithium matrix, EPS manifolds...they're all in the green. We can do this for a week if we wanted too."

Tucker landed a clapping open hand on Kelby's right shoulder, "Good job."

"Thank you, sir."

Trip turned and walked past the core, looking over to his other two senior engineers, "Hess, Rostov, I owe you two a beer."

With that he climbed the gantry to the core itself, checking his readings, locking in settings as an operational macro. All the settings in the core and the nacelles would have to be saved if they wanted a repeat performance. The numbers didn't lie, they were at Warp 8.1028 If they could maintain, they would reach Vulcan in under 80 hours, of course they would go through a sixth of their fuel reserve doing so. It was going to be a torturous three days for his people. Turning to face away from the engine which even now was accosting him with its heat, he shouted.

"Alright everyone listen up! I'm relaxin' the grooming standard, strip down to your skivvies or get in athletic utilities, it's gonna be hot as hell in here for the next few days. Everyone is to consume at least one half liter of water per hour you are on shift. Make sure you have electrolyte packets, you need to be taking one of those every two hours. Also, get us some fans in here. I know it's gonna be hell, but we're gonna have to endure it." He looked around, despite the discomfort his people all had elated looks on their faces, excited to be part of the history making team, "We got a solid copy on that?"

"Aye, sir!" They almost all shouted as one.

"Carry on."

He descended from the gantry and approached Kelby again, "I have to head up to the bridge, I'll be back down to relieve you as soon as I can."

"Aye, sir."

He walked out of engineering calmly, not wanting his concern and fear to show to his people, each step came a little fast than the first until he broke into a desperate run. He had to find her, find out what happened. If only she would have closed him out, run away from the dark place and closed her mind off. All he could sense of her now was a small mote of suffering, like the residual hysteria from her breakdown minutes before. He tried to focus on it, to hunt it down and find her.

_T'Pol?_

A compulsion of logic told him to head towards the center of the saucer section, she would have fled the bridge, taken a turbolift, the breakdown happened so quickly she would likely still be near there. He ran through the litany of possible worse-case scenarios, praying internally that in each case it wasn't so.

_T'Pol, can you hear me?_

_Trip..._ It was a small sound, weak and pitiful.

_I'm comin' baby, where are you?_

He knew immediately the turbolift she would be in, approaching he pressed the call key, the seconds ticked by with agonizing slowness. He heard the approach, the slowing, then the stop. Impatience and fear got the better of him, he forced his fingers into the gap of the door, forcing it open. Before him T'Pol sat on the floor of the turbolift, hands still clinging to the railing inside, her face turned away as if just clinging to consciousness. He almost leapt to her side, taking her face in his hands.

"T'Pol...T'Pol...it's me."

She didn't seem to respond, her lips pale and her eyes locked at some indeterminate catatonia induced point of reference.

"T'Pol, it's me baby, c'mon darlin' talk to me."

Her eyes focused and all she saw was the shadow shrouded Trip-shaped monster, eyes glowing with that eldritch jonquil shade. She pushed away at it as it tried to touch her, its hands holding her face gently. She did not want this thing to hold her, to protect her, she did not want its violence as a shield. But at the same time, she did...something primal and instinctively Vulcan felt loved by it. The fear and wonder still permeated her like a sour-sweet smell, something instinctual and elemental that wanted to be embraced by the monster and occulted into the dark caves where it waited to visit its wrath on anything that threatened her. Her hands pushed and clung alternately as her logic and instinct warred. This thing, this aberration was speaking to her, using the words of her mate. The soft endearing terms, the gentle touch and caress of her ears, the soft lips on her brow. The oily smoke of the shadows whipped away leaving nothing but Trip, her Trip in front of her.

"-alright baby, I'm here, you're alright."

"Trip!" she choked on the emotions that made her want to scream, out loud, from her own throat rather than just in her mind.

"Let's get you to sickbay."

She felt the strong limbs passing around and under here, his powerful right arm hooking under her legs while the left passed under her arms and around her back. She found herself hoisted into the air effortlessly. Some instinctual part of her mind was telling her that this was a prelude to mating and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She was being borne forth effortlessly by her mate's strength, he smelled of sweat, a seep of hormones pushed his pungent musk outwards, she felt intoxicated by it as her mind continued to reel under the inadvertent accosting she had received from his. She began to plant small kisses along his jaw, trying to induce him to mate with her again, unsure if he was Trip or the monster, or if he was, indeed both; the instinctual needs overriding everything in her.

"Not now, darlin'."

Her breathing was speeding, the olive tinge showing again in her skin, but he was feeling nothing from her mind, there was nothing conscious occurring, just snatches of impression, vague and almost instinctual. It was like he had short circuited her brain, it was rebooting from its BIOS. She was being touched, held, she seemed to recognize his appearance and smell, input. It must mean she was supposed to engage him in mating behavior, output. He couldn't help but marvel on how simplistically Vulcans defaulted to fight or mate instincts. He allowed muscle memory to carry him to sickbay as he pushed all his consciousness into the now cracked and confused landscape of their link.

_T'Pol, listen to me. It's me, Trip, your K'diwa. I know what you saw scared you, but it's alright now. Focus on my voice, remember the Kir'Shara, remember the logic._

_K- diwa...Ket-cheleb, K'diwa._

He felt the mental impression, she was reaching for the dark place, wanting it. This was bad, he wasn't sure what he was going to have to do to reach her logical mind. Should he feed the desire? Let her partake of it until she exhausted her want and slaked the instinct that sought out most aggressive and base elements of his personality and soul?

_T'Pol, can you understand me?_

_Po wafu t'nash-veh aitlun?"_

_T'Pol!_ He bellowed the words in his mind, harsh, strict and terrible.

_Trip!_ The stern voice, the command pulled something out of her, discipline, obedience

_Listen to me, I need you to focus, I need you to come back._

_My instincts, they are pulling me to...that..._ She struggled with each projected word.

_Why?_

_It is...beautiful...to the instinctive Vulcan mind._

_What should I do?_

_Let me...partake of it...until the instinct is...sated._

The doors to sickbay opened as he bore the burden of his woman forward, laying her gently on a biobed as Phlox approached in a lather of medical concern. He immediately crossed to the readout on the biobed noting the irregularities occurring in T'Pol's neural patterns. With a speed belied by his normally composed nature he crossed to a medical cart readying a hypospray.

"Doc, wait."

"What happened? Is it her abnormal ovulation?" Phlox's concern was easily identifiable in his voice.

"Doc, listen to me...do you know about the low-expressing MAOA gene?"

"The violence gene?"

"Yes, all military model Augmentees have a modified version of the gene."

"What does this have to do with T'Pol?" He sounded flustered, rightfully so.

"Vulcan is about to come under attack, Cap'n contacted me and told me what was going on so I could push the reactor to give us more speed, when he told me the gene started to fire off." He looked at the Doctor, making eye contact, his expression dripping with seriousness, "This isn't something that fits with medical science so please trust what I'm going to say."

"Did you attack T'Pol?" Phlox was abnormally calm, almost understanding given his visible agitation just moments before.

"No, but she was subjected to a part of my mind that I hide from her, hide from the telepathic bond, the link."

"Your subconscious."

"I guess that's what it is, I just know that it's all the things I don't feel comfortable about her knowing about. Anyway she got exposed to it and she couldn't handle it, she's reverted to her instinctual self." Tucker's voice had changed, the twangy elements of his vocalization being replaced with cold and deadly serious precision.

"Do you know what I need to do?"

He took a deep breath, knowing what he was going to recommend went against anything that resembled good sense or rationality. He didn't like it, didn't consider it safe, but he had to believe that T'Pol's understanding of her Vulcan mind and the needs of it was far greater than his or Phlox's for that matter.

"I need you to inject me with adrenaline, she needs to satisfy the instinct so it will become passive again and her logic can take back over." The last word hung as he waited to see the Denobulan's response.

"Are you certain of this? Her neurology is showing an already hyper excited state."

"It's what she told me she had to do." He let the words hang, emphasizing how little either of them understood about the complexity of Vulcan neuro-telepathy.

"Very well, please hand me your side arm."

Trip assented and looked at the Doctor with confusion.

"I will stun you if you become uncontrollable." He stated matter-of-factly.

Trip couldn't help but let out a single snorting chuckle, "Don't worry Doc, it's not like Augmentees fly off the handle."

"Better safe than sorry, commander. What else do I need to do?"

"Nothing, I'll do it all, I just have to satisfy the part of her mind."

"Should I set up a privacy curtain or leave sickbay?" The consideration of the Doctor was almost touching.

"No, it's all going to go on in our heads."

T'Pol continued to babble in Vulcan behind them, her words tinged with the dusky tones of desire. She was pulling at her clothes, unsure how to get them off but feeling a drive to do so, her posture on the biobed welcoming her mate to mount. Phlox couldn't help but arch a bemused brow and suppress an awkward smile. It was a horrible time to do so, but he could not help it, he just had to make a joke, to poke fun at Mr. Tucker about their conversation the previous day.

"Mister Tucker, are you absolutely certain that you have not had more regular sexual contact with T'Pol."

Trip grimaced, "Oh c'mon Doc...seriously? Now of all times?"

"Just thought I would ask, I will administer the adrenaline now."

The sting at the injection site was nothing compared to the sudden burn he felt of the adrenaline hyper stimulating his nervous and muscular systems. Quickly, before he lost control to the rage he was building he took T'Pol's hand, twining fingers with hers forcing the depth in the touch telepathy. He let out a low rumbling grunt as he felt the low-expression MAOA gene regain control of his mind, he closed his eyes and consciously spurred it forward, standing behind the subconscious darkness and speaking to it in a way that he knew would force it to obey.

Phlox watched carefully as the human intertwined his fingers with the erratic Vulcan. He forced his eyes shut, his expression showing discomfort and remained still. No more than four seconds elapsed before T'Pol's back arched, her feet scrambling for purchase on the biobed, her brain activity was going berserk. The sounds leaving her throat were indistinguishable from pleasure or pain. This was concerning him greatly, he was trying to give the commander the benefit of a doubt but it was looking increasingly like he would be forced to intervene. He ready the hypospray with a powerful sedative, if necessary he would sedate the sub-commander before any potential damage became permanent. The brain waves suddenly spiked off the chart and she let out a sound like a death rattle, a single long groaning sigh of an exhale then lay very still. Her heart rate, respiration, brain waves all disappeared for a split second, Phlox was just turning to grab the crash kit when they resumed, the massive drop in activity approximating a flat-line to machines that were not designed to deal with biometric feedback this erratic. She took a series of deep breaths and raised her head.

As if on cue Tucker opened his eyes, shaking his head hands coming up to his pounding temples, suddenly very pale. He smiled weakly, eyes fixed on his mate's, then with a sudden uncomfortable swallow, ran to the closest sink and vomited. Phlox looked back and forth between the two, trying to determine who he should attend to first, deciding to default to T'Pol as she was the one who had been mentally altered with accelerated heart rate moments before. Before he could being administering any aid the Vulcan sat up, looking over to her mate, climbing off the biobed just in time to be caught by the Denobulan before weak knees issued their refusal to hold her upright.

"Sub-commander, do you know who I am, do you know where you are?"

"Trip." She struggled, she still sounded mentally altered, her voice trembling, high from her upper lungs in the tones of panic breathing.

"No...I am not Trip, do you know who I am and where you are." He patiently demurs.

"Help, Trip. Doctor, he's ill." She protested.

"Oh alright, close enough. Sit down and do not move from here." Phlox admonished helping her back up onto the biobed.

He is already upright before Phlox and reach him, wiping blood tinted bile from his lips. The color immediately alarms Phlox who opens his mouth to demand Tucker get to a biobed but before he can begin his medical order he is cut off by the commander.

"It's nothin' Doc, just a combination of adrenaline, heat, and stress."

"You are bleeding mister Tucker." The Denobulan protests.

"I bit my tongue in engineerin' when we were pumpin' the engines." He explains calmly, "See."

Tucker extends the muscle which bears a harsh avulsion on its side, the flesh tattered and still bleeding. Phlox's shoulders sag, mouth injuries are common in humans who still tend to use their mouths as an instinctual extension of their sensory system. They heal quickly and with little necessity for medical interference, still the potential for infection, while remote, still exists. He prepares a dose of antibiotics as a precautionary measure, holding it upwards he declares his intentions.

"I'm going to give you some antibiotics to ensure there is no infection of the wound site."

"Can we make it snappy, Doc? I gotta get to the bridge."

_T'Pol, baby, you there?_

"Of course, commander, shouldn't take more than a moment."

_T'Pol, oh God, please be there._

"Be certain to avoid contact with any foreign objects other than food, if it becomes sore a topical analgesic should lessen the discomfort."

_Oh God, I don't know if I can go on now, it'd be like cuttin' out my eyes._

He looks over, seeing her beautiful eyes setting on his, a hint of sadness within; her expression is almost pleading. He pushes at the space where her mind should be, trying to invade it by force, to reestablish the mental beach-head as it were. As hard as he tries, he can only find the same space devoid of any trace of her. His subconscious, the place where all the horrible things the modified MAOA gene has caused him to do, the things that brought her discomfort, the out of control passion...it is scattered everywhere in his mindscape. It is his mind again, his alone and it has returned to the dark and frightening place it was before she caused him to find order in it all. The emotional pain is excruciating, worse than losing Lizzie, worse than the Bat'leth scars, worse than the normal nightmares. He finds he can't look at her, the face too painful to see, those eyes so sad over what he was, what he had done to her, the lie that was Charles Tucker III. Now that she had seen it all, the unvarnished horror of the human capacity, she could not continue to sully herself by being one with him; in mind or body. He couldn't help but feel the tremendous and shattering feeling of loss as he fumbled to accept the reality that she had closed him out.

"Keep an eye on her, Doc, make sure she's alright, okay?"

_Trip._

_Trip!_

_TRIP!_

Nothing, there is nothing but silence in the bond, and the memory of the sadness on his face. The sorrow born of betrayal and inadequacy. The belief she wants the monster that resides inside him more than his conscious mind. As he turns to leave she rises to follow but is immediately accosted by the overly diligent Phlox, she half ponders making a dash for the door, but given her recent abnormal behavior, this rather uncharacteristic move on her part would likely prompt the Doctor to put her on bed rest. That's when it occurs to her, the altered state, the abnormal behavior.

"Doctor Phlox, would it be possible to do a full scan of my neural pathways?"

"Certainly, I could complete it in the imagine chamber quite easily. Is there some issue, sub-commander?"

"I believe my recent, episode, has altered my brain chemistry."

* * *

><p>When T'Pol returned to the bridge she found that her mate had already been to see the captain and had offered an impromptu cover for her. He claimed that due to the alleged sensitivity of her ears and the lack of intervening bulkhead between the bridge and ready room she must have overheard what was happening to Vulcan. It was then that she found out about the Romulan attack force and she steeled herself to prevent a reaction having already had a pronounced episode of trauma once today. After returning to her post the captain issued a ship wide announcement to all hands, there course had been laid in to Vulcan to provide whatever assistance they could. She could feel the seething anger through the ship, it was almost a smell as the large number of Augmentees in the crew seemed to slip into a moment of contained murderous rage. To her perceptions it was almost as if the room darkened as she saw the gritted teeth and darkened eyes of Reed, Mayweather, O'Donnel, and Gangjeon. She maintained the facade of calm Vulcan detachment throughout her shift, even as she desperately searched her mind for an explanation as to why she could no longer feel her mate.<p>

The sudden mental amputation was disconcerting, she had been aware of his presence, projecting and receiving abstract concepts and feelings for months. Though direct communication through their mind had only been possible since she awoke after her quasi-Plak tow, the comfort she found in the connection was highly pronounced. She plodded through her shift and upon its end immediately resolved to find him. He was, if one thing, predictable, and when she showed up at engineering he was stripped to the waist save for a non-regulation tank top, sweating in the sweltering heat of engineering. Even by Vulcan standards she found it to be warm, and the rest of the engineering crew had been reduced to wearing their athletic shorts and T-shirts to deal with the heat.

His eyes brushed over her but he immediately turned away, reminding her to the hurt she saw on his face when he left sickbay. Approaching again she had been forced to physically grab his arm, allowing herself the moment of appreciation at the sensation of the thick bicep under her small fingers, with the force she could muster she pushed the arm to physically rotate him to look at her.

"Commander, do you have a moment?" She kept her voice calm and measured even as her eyes shone with barely restrained emotion.

His expression proved to be more of a mystery, "Alright sub-commander, lets step into my office."

She barely waited to get into the office before she started speaking, she had to reassure her mate, in doing so perhaps it would calm her as well. "Trip, something went wrong."

"Yeah, I know..."

"My neuro-chemistry has been disrupted, that is what has severed our bond."

"And it's all my fault...right?"

She cocked her head, she hadn't intended for this to become confrontational, "There was clearly an area of your psyche that I did not adequately prepare or compensate for."

"So, in short, my brain is a time bomb that can blow you up at any point."

"Trip, no, it's not that at all." She didn't understand where this confrontational disposition was coming from.

"Maybe you'd just be better off without me to make your brain go haywire."

She felt the wave of anger buffet against her logic, her expression cooled, the desperation and attempts at understanding swimming under the surface of her eyes now replaced with adamantine disdain. "Perhaps, it is a matter best discussed between adults, if you locate one, perhaps this conversation can be continued."

"Did you just..."

"I see no logic in continuing this conversation until you can operate on a level above hormone ridden adolescence, Commander Tucker."

Hands clamped behind her back she spun on her heal and exited the office. He stepped after her, wanting to call her back but the voice catching in his throat as his teeth clenched and his stubborn pride dug its claws in. Just who the hell did she think she was? Six hours ago she was catatonic in a turbo-lift because she couldn't follow the basic instructions to avoid an area of his brain he kept from her. He had been the one who had to deal with a severely lacerated tongue, adrenal overload, and the constant stress of worry while working in an un-climate controlled 115 degree engineering. He was the one who got cut off...because her brain went haywire...she hadn't chosen to do anything.

"Jesus Christ on the cross...what the hell are you thinkin', Tucker?"

She hadn't decided to sever the bond, she hadn't decided to close him out, she had come here, to him, to explain, to reconcile. And now he had bull-headedly run her off, he came off his feet like a hidden spring-board had suddenly launched him and dashed out of engineering, hoping to catch sight of her only to look down an empty hallway. His mouth drew into a wide, thin frown, teeth gritting. Walking back into engineering he re-entered his office and grabbed a blank PADD from its staging rack and began typing out the note. Mentally he began trying to determine what would constitute a good make-up gift for Vulcans.


	8. Chapter 8

The comforting weight pressing against Minister T'Pau was only offset by the corners of combat equipment digging at her through her robes. The human pressed against her is making himself a shield, any Romulan attack will be forced to penetrate him to reach her, no small feat considering the layers of energy dissipating armor covering his chest. The fact that it was Colonel Shelby himself that was putting himself in the path of any threat added more to the strange sense of comfort and safety. He was a fine officer, a skilled warrior, and, above all, her friend, a man she had come to trust emphatically despite their stark differences in ideology between his martial training and her Syrranite pacifism. He was a strong, independent man, strong willed, stubborn, loyal and brave, qualities she had come to see as common among humans, but there was also an unswerving respect of Vulcan culture. When he had showed up in her office, armed and clad as he was now in the camouflage and body armor of the MCS MAC-V Marines, he had respectfully offered the Ta'al and spoke with a Vulcan sensibility; "Peace and long life, it is agreeable to see you, Minister T'Pau."

He had wished her peace, despite the fact he had fought his way to the High Command administrative building, fought his way inside, and even now he and his Marines had fought their way to the MAC-V garrison compound. Many Romulans, and the chiropteran creatures that fought alongside them had fallen to his platoon as they crossed the three kilometers between the two compounds. He lifted a hand receiver from a load-bearing point on his body armor, keying a frequency and speaking into it.

"Black Flag, this is Archangel actual, we are point five zero three klicks from your location, approaching along MSR cobra, over."

She couldn't hear the reply, the earpiece of the hand unit directed the sound into his ear, not that she was sure she would have understood what was said anyway. Theirs was an esoteric coded language, the words were all familiar to her, but their usage was alien, clipped, the distinctly martial form that seemed to punctuate many aspects of humanity that she had experienced.

"Roger that, we will rendezvous in zero six mikes."

Shelby had served with the MCS Marines since she was a child, twenty four years of service, seventeen of them as part of MAC-V on Vulcan. Theirs had been a strange relationship since their first meeting, it had been by coincidence that she was assigned to a cultural outreach program for young MCS officers. She had only been 18 at the time, selected by dint of her knowledge of Vulcan cultural history and her understanding of Surak's teachings. Captain Wayne Shelby had struck her as bellicose and barbaric. His platitudes and courtesy had, at the time, seemed like flirtatious advances. It wasn't until meeting him once again fourteen years later that she realized that the now Colonel Shelby was a true admirer or Vulcan culture and considered his time in MAC-V as an honor and a privilege. Had he not been twelve years her senior, a man devoted to duty, and had she not undertaken Kolinahr at the age of 26 they may have become more than simply close friends as she still, on occasion, considered to logical aspects of taking him as mate or lover.

"Ministers, we're moving out, stay low and keep between the wall and my men." Shelby declared gruffly, rising to a crouch, and turning he made momentary eye-contact with her then quickly averted his eyes as he always had. "Stay close."

They began to move forward down the alleyway, so far the bombardment of plasma mortars had failed to touch these buildings. In the distance weapons fire could be heard along with muffled explosions of the mortars striking elsewhere. T'Pau found the helmet and energy resistant vest to be ungainly and uncomfortable, amazing that the MCS Marines dealt with them with such ease, or the kilograms upon kilograms of additional equipment they carried. T'Pau understood that many of these men were easily as strong or even stronger than a Vulcan male, but not even the Vulcan military, such as it was, went into the field as well armed and prepared as these humans. It seemed every inch of their equipment had a double purpose. They carried knives, hand hatchets they called tomahawks, pull ties, medical kits, container after container of ammunition, water, rations, rope, tourniquets, maps, communication equipment and of course their primary weapon. Humans still seemed intent on using primitive chemical propelled ballistic projectile weapons. She had always questioned the logic of this move on their part until today.

"Contact left!" One of the Marines shouted.

She saw Colonel Shelby wheel left, firing two quick shots followed by another two quick shots. A pair of the chiropteran soldiers fell dead instantly. The first had been struck high in the chest and neck, the other had the back of its head explode into a momentarily perceivable mist before dropping stiffly to the ground. Two pair of thermoplastic casings ejected from the weapon in time with the shots and clattered softly on the ground below. The report of the weapon was loud and harsh to T'Pau's sensitive ears and the smell of burned cordite and blood assaulted her hyper-sensitive female nose.

This wasn't to be the end, however, more of the bestial aliens seemed to stream from out of adjoining alleyways, prompting the remaining marines to open fire. Her hands came up to her ears and she forced her mind to ignore and block out the sounds. All she could perceive was the overwhelming smell of the cordite and the muzzle flash punctuated firefight. The black clad lanky beast-men never had an opportunity. Their tactics were flawed, they sought to advance and find fighting positions at close range before beginning their fire. The shots they did let off were too few and far between compared to the rapid engagement and quick semi-automatic fire of the MCS fighters. Two the MCS soldiers were hit in the exchange, one took a blast to his energy jacket and was otherwise unfazed, the other took a shot in the leg which immediately dropped him to the ground, the blast point scorched black and blood quickly soaking the pants leg. The stricken Marine didn't even look to his injured limb, just brought his weapon back up and returned fire, catching another of the attackers in the throat.

T'Pau could see advancing Romulan soldiers behind the bat-like black clad aliens that had formed the attacking vanguard. Back down from the direction they had come she saw what appeared to be anywhere from 30 to 50 advancing Romulans and these client-race creatures. One of the Marines that had been carrying a significantly larger and longer weapon than his comrades brought his heavy rifle-like device to bear and a strobe of muzzle flashes punctuated the air at the weapon's barrel as a cascade of thermoplastic casings rained down. The advancing bat-faced people folded as she saw individual points where their uniforms seemed to tug inwards then pop outward around small points on their body where high velocity metallic projectiles tore through. The advance stymied, another marine lobbed a small device into their midst which popped in a quick flash, rending limbs and flesh and filling the alley wish smoke. The carnage mystified her, she had never seen violence like this; raw and final, not like a duel or martial arts match, this was life and death in an elemental form.

She felt a strong hand close around her arm and start dragging her forward. She looked up to see Shelby's face, grim and determined, his mouth was moving but she didn't hear a word of it. She, Shelby, the other twelve ministers, and thirteen of Shelby's marines pushed forward in a quick trot. Looking over her shoulder she saw the remaining marines, they were buying them time to get back to the MCS Garrison walls, likely at the price of their own lives. It overwhelmed her to think these humans, who had no vested interest in insuring the survival of the Vulcan government or, for that matter, its people were willing to die for them...for her. It was illogical, horrifically illogical, and yet sublimely human. Her hearing still not back from her mind's compensation measure she finds herself suddenly pushed against a wall, his body pressed against her just as she feels a sudden increase in pressure and feels, rather than hears, her ears pop. A bit of hot metal stings her shin as it scythes through her robe and the trousers underneath, opening up a small cut. She can smell the pungent metallic odor of human blood, Shelby had taken the majority of the damage from the explosion. Pulling her away from the wall, he urged her forward, his left hand pressed against her back between the shoulders.

She focused on the discipline she learned in reaching Kolinahr and shoved instinctive thoughts and reactions from her mind as she worked to restore her hearing. The hand came away and she turned to look over her shoulder, Shelby's back was to her, his rifle against his shoulder as he squeezed off shots in the direction of the enemy. Ahead the walls of the MCS garrison loomed, on towers along the length of the wall, marksman and crew served weapons were beating back the Romulan forces, sanctuary lay just ahead. She turned back just in time to see the Colonel take two disrupter pulses in his body armor, he spun and drew his side arm, quickly firing three shots into each of two attackers; one of the chiropteran variety and one a Romulan. Her hearing returned just in time to for him to shout with every modicum of martial precision she had come to expect of him.

"Minister T'Pau, move that cute little ass of yours, ma'am!"

* * *

><p>T'Pol found herself at once totally focused on both their impending arrival in the Vulcan star system and the current state of her relationship with Commander Tucker. They would be arriving in Vulcan space inside twenty minutes. All communications going in and coming out of Vulcan had ceased, it was likely the Romulan armada was already in position. The realization of what faced her home, her people had left her feeling numb. It wasn't even a logical resolution, she just couldn't process the idea; neither emotion, nor instinct, nor rational consideration could begin to work out a plausible reaction. Thus she had just remained impassive about it, seeming confused and oblivious when <em>Enterprise's <em>crew would extend their sympathy. To her it was the least of her worries; her mate and the news from Phlox had been bigger and far more imminent concerns for her.

Logically she should have forgiven Trip already, he had apologized with such sincerity, brought her an ancient book of human poetics passed down in his family line for generations. He had administered the most tender and precise neuro-pressure session she had ever experienced and then dismissed himself before receiving his reciprocal treatment. At first she had just been enjoying the idea of him squirming a little. She was certain the bond would return, she had told him as much after the first round of apologies, but something about watching him work so hard to find his way back into her favor had been...agreeable. With each day that passed he grew a little more desperate, bending over backwards between his shifts in the hellish heat of engineering and any of a thousand combat preparations he had done anything in his capacity to please her. When he had suggested that perhaps some "intimacy" might restore the bond she found herself rebuffing him with an elevated level of spite she didn't fully understand. Her exact words, uttered in a sudden uncontrollable fit of passion had been, "So you are behaving with contrition just so you can get in my pants?" She had heard the term about one individual entering the leg garments of another from Hoshi and she was not entirely certain why she had used that particular piece of vernacular.

Phlox's announcement when he had called her to sickbay this morning was another matter entirely.

"Captain, we'll be dropping out of Warp in fifteen minutes sir." Mayweather declared, still sounding personable and friendly despite what was clearly a highly honed tactical preparedness.

"Tactical alert."

The lights dimmed and condition red was shown followed by a trio of braying horn sounds filled the ship. The flurry of activity on the bridge spiked as it had, she imagined, throughout the ship. _Enterprise_ was first and foremost considered to be a warship by MCS and battle drills were a constant fixture of life aboard. Many of the crew had lived through Task Force: Saber and were, by now, highly adept and accustomed to the martial drill and practice that was entailed by going into battle.

"Archer to engineering."

"Tucker here, sir."

"Commander Tucker, divert available energy to tactical systems."

"Aye, sir."

To T'Pol's right and behind Archer, Lieutenant Commander Reed spoke, "All targeting solutions clear, sir. Phased Energy Cannons charged, photon launchers loaded, tubes two, four, five and seven stand ready, rail gun capacitors fully charged."

"I'm picking up a lot of comm chatter, sir. Unknown broadcast patterns, does not conform to know broadcasting protocols." Sato declared.

"Captain." T'Pol double checked the long range readings in front of her, "Long range scans are showing a number of vessels around Vulcan, none of them conform to known Vulcan ship models."

"How many, Sub-commander?" Archer inquired, his face locked into a serious glare that would likely remain unchanged until well after any battle that occured.

"Fifty four, sir." T'Pol answered very matter-of-factly. "There also appears to be some sort of jamming field around much of the most populated hemisphere of the planet."

"Mister Mayweather, time to drop out of warp?"

"Four minutes, sir."

"Captain!" Hoshi shouted, "I am picking up a ULF transmission, it's getting through the field."

"Let's hear it."

"-any friendly ship, this is macvee command, we need immediate extraction for twenty two members of the Vulcan High Command, repeat, immediate extraction for twenty two members of the Vulcan High Command. Coordinates are planetary standard, five six three one niner five four two. Message repeats. To any friendly ship, this is macvee command, we need-"

"Do the Romulans have this transmission?" Archer asked, perhaps knowing that there was no way anyone on the bridge could know for sure but wanting some sort of opinion from his bridge staff.

"Unlikely, sir. MCS is the only organization that uses frequencies this low, and only friendly forces are aware of it." Hoshi declared as if to provide some measure of reassurance.

"T'Pol?"

"Twenty two members is the majority of the Vulcan High Command, captain. It is safe to say that they present a high value target to the Romulans and could explain the presence of the jamming field." She answered with frank Vulcan precision, seeming to ignore the fact that the people she spoke of constituted her government.

"How did they get that jamming field in place so fast?" Hernandez seemed to rhetorically query.

"It is likely they had infiltrators in place ahead of the assault." T'Pol answered dryly.

"So we have to knock out the dampeners so we can beam them out." Archer wasn't so much declaring as laying down an imperative.

Reed swallowed hard and spoke, "Sir, a shuttle won't make it through their defensive screen, and we won't be able to beam in."

"You will need someone with engineering experience to deactivate the field, Captain." T'Pol added.

"So what we need is an engineer with Ultra high altitude jump experience." Archer cut eyes over to Hernandez who arched her brows in concern.

"Jon..."

"Bridge to engineering!" He barked.

"Jon..." Hernandez admonished again.

"Tucker here, sir!"

"Commander I need you in armory five, on the double."

T'Pol felt her heart leap in her chest. Not her mate, not him. How had she managed to overlook the possibility? He was the only qualified person on the ship to undertake the required action. She felt sudden twinges of fear and doubt, the concept that he would be jumping from the ship and into a deadly combat situation caused her insides to feel as though they were churning uncontrollably.

"Aye, sir."

The captain rose from his chair and started for the Turbo lift, Hernandez on his heels.

"Captain, he hasn't made one of these jumps in seven years now." She protested.

"Don't worry Commander, I know exactly what he would say, 'it's just like fallin' out of a ship...you never forget how'." He offered a feeble smile, not entirely sure himself that he wasn't sending his friend to his death.

* * *

><p>Trip had never changed out of his clothes and into a new set with greater speed in his life, that much he was certain of. As one of ten people on the ship and the only non-marine certified in ultra high altitude parachute procedure, he had a set of gear already stowed with a set of combat utilities in a locker with his name on it in armory number 5. Major Hayes and a seven man Marine section were already waiting in the armory along with Captain Archer. He was experiencing more than a few butterflies in his stomach, he had, indeed, not executed one of these jumps since the 47 conflict. The procedure was not that complicated, at least not in his opinion, but he had not had time to familiarize himself with his particular kit yet. It had been set up in accordance to Naval DemolitionShore Party TO&E, a standard he had helped set, but he still hadn't broken in this particular set of equipment. Apart from his lighter weight carbine rifle and the black fabric cladding his body armor and helmet he was identical to the 7 Marine section he would be dropping in with.

"We need the jamming system here." Archer pointed at a map of Shi'Kahr, "Disrupted or destroyed so we can beam out the High Command personnel in the macvee garrison compound. We won't get a second chance at this, as soon as we drop out of warp we're going to have Romulan warships dogging us."

"You can count on us, sir." Trip offered.

"I'm sorry we have to do this, Trip, but we're short on options and long on possible complications."

"Sir...we'll manage, just make sure we have a ship to come back to."

Archer extended a hand to his chief engineer who took it, a firm handshake followed with the Captain nodding, his facial expression doing little to hide the deadly seriousness of his decision. "Good luck, Trip."

"I was born lucky."

Hayes looked to his drop section, "Alright marines, get some!"

"Oorah!" The seven replied in unison.

The intercom in the room came to life, "Hernandez to Armory five, we are dropping out of warp, atmospheric penetration is zero five minutes."

Archer turned and dashed for the door, heading back to the bridge where he was needed. Hayes crossed to Tucker, checking his jump gear and equipment one last time like a doting parent sending a child to the first day at school.

"You alright with this, Commander? It's been a while since you made this kind of jump."

"I 'ppreciate the concern, Major, but I'll be fine. It's kind of hard to forget after the first time." Trip offered the Major a wry smirk.

"You got that right, Commander. You'll have full command authority once you hit the ground. Good luck and God speed, sir." Hayes saluted smartly, prompting the engineer to return the gesture.

Tucker crossed to the lock-out chamber, waiting for the seven marines to file in. He looked over his shoulder one last time, hoping that he would see T'Pol even though he wouldn't have time to say more than a couple of words to her. Still, without being able to hear her or feel her in his mind it would be at least some comfort. What was he thinking? She would have to be on the bridge, they were about to head into the biggest fire-fight they had ever faced and over her home world to boot. To think she would come down to see him off was just selfish and stupidly romantic. He stepped into the lockout chamber and closed the door, affixing his respirator and double checking the seals on his gloves and boots. A red condition light came on in the cramped air-lock, a small readout showing they were still in near-vacuum. He felt the subtle lurch of the ship leaving warp and the impulse engines kicking in at full power for the planetary approach.

Travis piloted the way God would if he sat behind the navigation console of a Starship. Trip's experience with the ships feel and his knowledge of the low gravity yield of the lockout chambers grav plating allowed him to feel the ship roll in towards the planet, accelerating at what must have been full impulse. He slowed his breathing which he was just now realizing to be accelerated and labored, his heart was pounding, he felt a slight tremble in his knees. During the 47 war he had felt invincible, the product of youth and not knowing any better. He was an elite starfleet engineer that had undergone training only the toughest marines managed, he was bad-ass personified. The realities of combat had cured him of those illusions. He found that he wasn't so much worried about dying as he was by failing. Failure was not, could not be an option.

* * *

><p>"Ma'am, two Romulan vessels closing, I detect energy banks being charged." Reed declared, his voice flat and calm.<p>

"Don't give them the benefit of the doubt mister Reed, you are weapons free." Hernandez declared.

"Aye, locking targeting solutions." Reed depressed a series of buttons, "Firing, batteries four and six."

Two of the dual rail gun batteries made minor trajectory adjustments and fired, each barrel loosing a trio of 25 kg osmiridium slugs at a velocity of 62 kilometers a second, further accelerated by _Enterprise's_ own speed. Unsure what had been fired at them, the Romulan ships attempted no evasive action, not that it would have mattered, based on their speed of approach their turn rate would not have cleared them off the fire lane fast enough. The first round from each barrel of the first gun ripped a deep gouge into their armor, ignoring their shielding entirely, the gouge was deepened as the second round impacted a fifteenth of a second later and the third each bit through the outer hull, opening a pair of grapefruit sized breaches in the outer hull. The second guns rounds smashed squarely into the port nacelle of the second ship, ripping cleanly into the structure and striking the warp coils within. There was an explosion as the capacitated coils suffered catastrophic failure, blowing the Nacelle open like a split pea pod. The lights flickered on the ship and it started to drift.

"Give them more of the same, mister Reed." Hernandez stated with all the composure and certitude that must have served Lord Nelson.

Battery five fired, again sending six super-dense lances of metal speeding towards the first Romulan ship. They struck at a less pronounced incline as the Romulan craft listed to port executing a turning maneuver. Smashed hull plating drifted away from the retreating ship as the first set of rounds collided with the large truncated tear-drop shaped hull with the next two sets of rounds opening ghastly two meter across holes in the ship's hull. Debris was sucked out as the effected decks decompressed with explosive speed, ripping the holes open wider as plating mounts fail and a rounded geometric section of the outer hull is blown away by rapidly and violently escaping atmosphere.

_Enterprise_ rocketed past as Mayweather danced the cruiser between the two ships, complicating a firing solution for the Romulan ships ahead unless they wish to risk hitting their comrades. The Turbo lift opened and Archer crossed to his command couch, taking a seat and reassuming control of the bridge.

"Steady as she goes, mister Mayweather." He gasped out, short of breath from running from armory 5 at the back of the ship to the turbo lift.

"Sir, two more Romulan ships are firing." Reed declared, "Hull plating to maximum."

The impacts rocked the ship, as two disrupter beams struck while another went wide. Malcolm eyeed his defense systems readout. "Shields at seventy three percent, hull plating at full. Permission to fire type fifty one capital missiles, sir?"

"Granted."

"Aye, sir. Targeting solution locked, deploying weapons."

A pair of the 10 meter long missiles spat from their respective tubes on a jet of compressed gas, the rocket motors igniting a split second later sending the missiles streaking forward at nearly seventy eight Gs of acceleration. The path of each arced out and away in a lovely and smooth parabolic curve. Foolishly the Romulans ignored them, instead focusing their canons and the fast approaching Starfleet Cruiser. Reed was bent over his targeting display, providing an enhanced set of telemetry to each of the missiles, applying a target point at the location he believed their engine power transfers were located.

Archer was stunned and amazed when the missiles suddenly turned sharply and plunged into the aft section of the two approaching enemy frigates, striking at or near the aft engine housings located at the narrow end of the flattened tear drop hulls. The starboard most ship shuttered and began to list as a gout of flame shout out of a ventral exit wound while the port most ship had its aft section unceremoniously split open by a sympathetic explosion.

"I think we got their attention, sir, six more Romulan ships moving to intercept." Reed stated.

"Hoshi, see if you can get any Vulcan ships in the area on comms, we could use a little backup here." The Captain ordered.

"Fifty second to atmosphere, Captain." Mayweather reported, his hand gently and slowly manipulating the control yoke.

"Miss Sato, get macvee on ULF, inform them their extraction is here." Hernandez intoned.

"Aye, ma'am! Macvee command, macvee command, this is CGX zero one Enterprise, come back."

"Enterprise, this is macvee command, what is status on evac of tier one persons? Over." The voice is modulated and lacks tonal depth due to the low frequency transmitter.

"Macvee command, we are inserting team to knock out enemy technical obstructions, request specific coordinates for beam out locations, over." Hoshi's voice protocol is utterly seemless.

"Negative, negative, system too complex to be reduced, need technical support for task. Abort insertion, repeat, abort insertion."

"Negative, macvee, insertion team contains engineer. Drop team ETA two eight mikes, over."

"Christ, you're dropping an engineer? That's suicide!" The operator on the other end broke voice protocol, in utter shock over the assertion.

"Negative, macvee, engineer is brigade landing team certified, MARSOC team inbound, over."

There was a moment of silence on the other end, "You beautiful doll, I'm buying you a drink. Solid copy, will broadcast beam-out coordinates on frequency five zero point three. Welcome to Vulcan, Enterprise, macvee, out."

The ship shook again as the first Romulan warship reached disrupter range. Two more strikes landed causing more jump in the ship. Vulcan loomed before them, filling the entirety of the CIC view screen. Ground features and clouds started to pitch at Mayweather set his descent angle. Reed's hands flew over his weapons systems console, retracting the rail gun batteries into the ship.

"Fifteen seconds to atmospheric re-entry."

"All hands, brace for atmospheric re-entry." The captain called out, patching into the ship's all-call system and sending the dreaded order through the entirety of _Enterprise_.

"That's a mighty steep approach angle." The misgiving in Erika Hernandez's voice was unmistakable as she instinctively tighted the grip on her seat.

"Travis?" Archer needed say nothing else.

"I can do it, sir."

"If we are half a degree off at this angle we are going to tear the nacelles off." Hernandez protested.

"Travis?"

"Sir, I can do it, I can get the angle, the Romulans won't be able to pursue." Mayweather's voice betrayed his intense focus despite his usual joviality, the mind of a piloting genius at work left no opportunity or room for him to be personable.

"Do it Travis, take us in."

"Aye."

The ship was suddenly wreathed in flame, the intense friction licked the entirety of the ship with fire. Everything was shaking, rumbling, jumping uncontrollably then as suddenly as it started, it stoped and for a moment everything becomes weightless as the grav plating and descending ship compensate for one another.

"Aft cameras!" Archer ordered, watching as the view screen switches to the aft view as the trio of Romulan ships attempted re-entry. Their angle was off, and immediately their shaking was visible.

"Mister Reed!" Hernandez shouted.

"Aye, ma'am, firing aft phasers." He stabbed his finger into the firing control, and a bolt of vermillion edged light speared into the closest Romulan vessel. The ship bucked uncontrollably, friction and atmospheric pressure shifting its hull, placing it in a flat hull fall. The starboard nacelle strained, the support pylon bent, then cracked against the tension. The nacelle sheered away sending the ship into a flat-spin descending towards the planet below in a doomed plummet.

The remaining two Romulan ships pulled out of the descent and away before they suffered a similar fate.

"Captain, we are two minutes from the Shi'Kahr drop window." T'Pol calmly intoned.

"Armory five, line of departure, two minutes." Archer relayed, depressing the intercom switch on his command couch.

* * *

><p>The door opened and the air quickly flooded out into the super-thin upper atmosphere. Looking out across the horizon Trip saw where sky met space, the red of Vulcan contrasting the blue sky far below. He wished he had a camera, it was beautiful. He'd print it out, panoramic, eight feet high, thirty feet long and wrap T'Pol's room in it. He suddenly remembered his helmet mounted combat recording system and fliped it on. He'd save her government, save her planet, save her people, then he'd give her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in picture form ao she could stare into it and for a moment be floating forty kilometers above the surface.<p>

"Commander Tucker, your combat camera is on." it was T'Pol's voice.

"Yeah, just looking at this view...God, it's beautiful."

The light in the bay flashed red three times then green, and without hesitation Trip launched himself from the hatch, executing a slow tumble as he looked back to the see the seven Marines about thirty meters behind him. He allowed a second partial tumble until he could see the faint outline of civilization in his immediate forward view, in line with the _Enterprise_ which was shooting away like a giant majestic bird riding on some magical current that would carry it around the world. And then a part of him wondered where all this poetic nonsense came from? The mission, the task, the first and most crucial focus. He nosed towards the Vulcan metropolitan center, just a patch of dark color against the ruddy landscape. He had conducted four jumps like this to qualify, two during the 47 War, this would be number seven, maybe this would be the lucky jump. Air slid by him feeling slick and oily, cold like night water, the thermal reactive qualities of his fatigues and the hood keeping the negative 70 degree cold just barely at bay. He pulled his arm in tight against his chest, sliding them forward against the resistance generated by his air speed, 225 meters per second, he does the mental arithmetic, he's falling at just shy of 500 miles power hour, he's in what they called Kittinger's Cut now. Of course Captain Kittinger had done it almost two hundred years ago out of an open gondola balloon, without the benefits of the technology Trip took for granted.

"God damnit, Tucker, stop ruminatin' and focus." He growled to himself.

His intercom cut in, "Commander Tucker, sir, if I may ask a question?" It was Lance Corporal Manansala.

"Shoot, Lance Corporal."

"Sir, why the hell would an engineer want to learn to do this?"

Trip chuckled to himself, "Seemed like it might be interestin'."

"That's actually a pretty good answer, sir." Sergeant Cummings replied this time.

"What's the usual answer?" Trip asked.

"Pretty much just what you said, sir." Manandala clarified.

* * *

><p>T'Pau could still vaguely hear the pitched firefight going on along the perimeter of garrison walls. According to what she had heard the Marines had managed to throw back six assaults so far with minimal casualties. As medics had begun treating the Colonel for his shrapnel wounds he had inquired about putting together a relief team for the seven man section who had acted as their blocking force. She saw the sadness and anger on his face when they had informed him that all of their life signs had ceased. She could see the self-blame, the way he pounded his fist into his leg when he though no one was looking. If he blamed anyone, other than the Romulans, it should be her and her fellow ministers who took the blame. Those seven humans were the first to die for their sake, to die for the sake of Vulcan, but would likely not be the last. It was so horribly illogical, nothing should have stopped the humans from declaring this a Vulcan matter and extricating themselves from it. Vulcan had not offered ships, no experts, no material support to Earth when the Xindi attacked. Why then were humans dying for them, for her?<p>

She could only reconcile the idea with emotion, emotions she no longer had and therefore could not contextualize. The inability to reconcile it almost felt frustrating, strange since she no longer experienced frustration, or so she believed. Shelby finally stood and approached her after having received a report brought to him by some sort of communications operator.

"Minister T'Pau, ma'am, Enterprise just entered planetary atmosphere seven minutes ago, it deployed a team of special forces marines and an engineer to knock out the dampening fields. Enterprise is going to beam you and the other ministers out and get you away from Vulcan."

"Colonel Shelby, this news is agreeable. It is gratifying to think we will make it out of this alive." She clasped her hands behind her back, looking up at the eyes that would not make contact with hers.

"We will need to move you and your fellow members of the High Command to a room where we can place signal boosters to ensure that Enterprise can get a good transporter lock."

"And what of you and your men, Colonel?" She noticed the dirt, grime, and blood on his face, fighting back the compulsion to wipe it away.

"We have to hold this position, ma'am. Standing orders for macvee is to insure the political and cultural continuity of Vulcan and its people. Our mission is to hold this planet and fight until either all the invaders are dead or we are."

She processed the information, part of her mind was telling her the proper response was shock. Beyond shock, she should be appalled, humans should not spill their blood for Vulcan; it was counter-intuitive. Humans would never be accepted on Vulcan, MAC-V was tolerated, but nothing more and it would never be. She had come to find Shelby to be agreeable, but she was not a consensus. Many of his soldiers were considered rash and boorish, even barbaric by many Vulcans, but here they were prepared to fight to the death for a world that did not want them. The illogic of it threatened to break the Kolinahr.

"Colonel Shelby, why would you do this? Why would you die for Vulcan, for me, for my people?"

"That's what being human is." He reply was glib, so true, so accurate. It was so distinctly human and it was maddening. Unresolved feelings, rhetorical arguments she could never adequately reach a conclusion to, about his race, about him, about Vulcan apathy and disdain towards people that would bleed to death in small alleys for her people finally broke her.

Tears, something she had not remembered for many years, without even realizing it they filled her eyes. "I order you not sacrifice yourself for me. I order you to escape to _Enterprise_."

"I'm sorry ma'am, but you're not in a position to order me around." He turned his head away, being sure not to look at the tears.

"I am a minister of the High Command!"

"Minister T'Pau, the garrison you are standing in is considered Earth territory by virtue of our status of forces agreement. You can't give me orders on Earth soil, and under our Status of Forces agreement, I can order you to escape planet." He sighed, glancing at her face a second, then away again, "Please don't make me order you, ma'am."

"Colonel Shelby, I think given the choice I would much rather face whatever fate may await right next to you. It may yet be that we will be presented with no other option, and I would find it an agreeable end."

The harsh prematurely aged face lightened a moment, "Well regardless what the outcome may be, I'd like to apologize now for anything I may have said regarding any part of your anatomy during your extraction and exfil to macvee headquarters, ma'am."

"At least I finally know exactly what you think about me, Colonel." She arches her brows at the older man, prompting him to almost smile...almost.

* * *

><p>Trip pulls his Marine standard sidearm quickly from his thigh holster firing a single 230 grain projectile into the still twitching corpse of the bat-faced nosferatu. Corporal Tanner immediately ran back into the room, sweeping it with his rifle then noticed the fresh hole in the creatures upper thoracic region. He lowered the weapon and looks to the engineer with mild incredulity, almost mouthing the word "really".<p>

"It was still movin'." Trip offered then reholstered the weapon turning back to the jamming device's control system. It was conveniently in Vulcan, probably a good indicator that it was created and emplaced by covert agents that had been inserted years in advance. What he was seeing he wasn't liking. He could bring the system down manually or simply plant demolition charges on it and blast it to kingdom come, but he had the distinct feeling that there was something in place to prevent it from being that simple.

"Hey, do me a favor and see if you can track down a wooden stake or the like, if that thing moves again I've gotta real quick way to make sure it won't get up again." He commented, continuously shifting his eyes over to the rapidly cooling pile of ugly on the ground.

"Think that's a Romulan, sir?" Tanner asked, seeming mildly disgusted.

"My money is on the one that looks like a Vulcan with the extra dose of serious on the forehead." Tucker countered, running a quick diagnostic.

"Why's that, sir?"

"He's better dressed." he noded at the corpse lying against a console, a large pool of green extended from the two holes in his chest and neck.

His portable console beeped and he checked the results, just as he had suspected and feared. The jamming device in question was part of a series of devices extending across much of the hemisphere. They had been covertly inserted into the planetary information network, each hub was connected to the next and each relied on the next to ensure total system integrity. In the case of the planetary information network, one lost hub just slowed information speed, but the jamming devices that had been spirited into the hubs were all interconnected, if one went down, they all went down. The problem was, as much as they were keeping anyone from beaming out, they were also preventing the Romulans from beaming in whole sale. As it was they had to be beaming in during a window in the code that kept randomizing the jamming frequency. As an added benefit it was also keeping the Romulans from getting targeting telemetry for orbital fire missions.

"Get me Rolston, we need to get ahold'a Enterprise." Trip ordered.

"Roger, sir."

He had to either calculate what the next window would be or find a way to introduce a window, either would be complicated and potentially risky, if the signal changed during transport and the sensors couldn't be made to adapt you could lose everyone mid transport, sending their atoms to forever float through the ether, the entire Vulcan High Command, dead. Introducing a window was his best bet, if he could crack the program, he could insert it and Enterprise could transport everyone up as soon as it was introduced. He downloaded a copy of the software into his mobile console, running the code breaker he noted how its complexities were a little too counter-intuitive, like a grad student project gone terribly wrong. If he didn't know better he would assume it was made by a teenager or under graduate. It was full of inside jokes, random and socially inappropriate commentary. There was one problem that he saw, there was a mutating algorithm built in the program in a low low tier of its self-analyzing security subroutines. In short, he had one chance to introduce the window, after that the program would rewrite itself and likely lock out interface.

Corporal Rolston approached with the ULF transmitter.

"Get me Enterprise."

"Enterprise, Enterprise, this is Barracuda, do you copy?" He paused, "Enterprise, prepare to receive traffic from Barracuda actual."

Rolston handed the receiver to Commander Tucker who held it to his ear.

"Alright, bad news and good news. Bad news is that we can't bring down the jamming network without the Romulans dropping every bady they have up there on planet. Good news is I can still get us a work around for a single twelve second beam-out window. On that note I'm recommending you use the troop transporter in Cargo bay three."

On the other end he heard Archer say something, then he spoke back to him, "Alright Trip, I've got Pierce and Hess heading to cargo three. How long will we have on this?"

"Well I can give you about ten seconds warning, then you have twelve seconds to complete the transport. It's cuttin' it close, but it's the only chance you've got unless you'd rather park over MCS and drop down a rope ladder."

"Alright Trip, start setting it up, we'll contact macvee and we've still got to get back into transporter range." Archer realized what his friend was saying, but didn't want to acknowledge it, he prayed someone would come up with a sudden alternative.

"Roger that, Cap'n, writing the program now, let me know when you're five seconds from transporter range and I'll start the countdown."

Fingers flying over the console he began writing the virus he could use to commandeer the jamming signal. Duty, honor, sacrifice, this was the point where all those concepts really got put to the test. Still, he could think of much worse places to die, he had just sort of hoped he would have had a little more time to wrap up a few things. Well, he wouldn't go down without a fight, so they shouldn't start planning his funeral quite yet.

"Rolston, put it on speaker please if you could, sir." He asked affably, completely out of place for the combat situation they are in. "Cap'n, got the virus ready, just give me a heads up."

* * *

><p>"Alright Trip, we got in contact with macvee, they put all the tier one persons in a room with signal boosters, that'll probably give us a few extra seconds on the transport window. We might be able to get you out too." Archer almost sounded desperate, it was most likely a state of denial.<p>

"Cap'n, there's no way you're goin' to be able to snag us too." Trip's voice was very calm, composed, accepting.

"Maybe we can send a shuttle down." He was at the bargaining stage, it was like a mini-grief paradigm in action.

"Romulans probably have triple A, sir. 'Sides, with the sensor jammin' trying to dock the shuttle would be murder."

"We could dock in space." Archer knew it was against every regulation there was, Hernandez's shaking head was a good enough indicator of that.

"Sir, as one of your senior officers I am forced to remind you that it would place both the ship and shuttle in imminent danger of attack. This is a combat zone, sir."

"We're almost in range sir, twenty five seconds out." Mayweather's voice sounded drained, demoralized, morose.

"You get that, Trip?" Archer swallowed hard.

"Roger that, uploading virus in T minus 20 seconds. Standard sensor protocols will be supported." He could faintly be heard whistling on the other end, it stopped suddenly, "Hey Cap'n, that reminds me, can you guys maybe toss some garlic and some wood out on your way over, I swear, these Romulans have vampires runnin' around with 'em, damnedest thing."

Archer was fighting the feelings starting to choke him up, sure he was talking to his friend for the last time, "Is that right?"

"Bullets work on 'em pretty good too, it seems, but I think he might be fakin'." There was a pause, "Uploading virus now."

Hernandez keyed into Bay 3, "Beam up the tier ones, now!"

Everything went silent, on the bridge, on the other end of the communications with Barracuda team, and from the Cargo bay itself. Seconds ticked by agonizingly slow, nothing was said as the twelve second window was rapidly closing in.

"Hess to bridge! We got them all!"

There was a universal sigh of relief on the bridge. It quickly passed as realization once again set in.

"Cap'n? Cap'n? You get 'em?" Trips voice filtered back through.

"Yeah, yeah Trip...we got 'em." He choked on the words.

"Well, I'll be damned, we really pulled it off. Guess this is going to have to go on the record for most eventful few days in my life." His wry chuckle barely filtered through.

He and the section with him was likely cut off, surrounded or soon to be by hostiles. The eight of them were more than fifteen miles from the MAC-V garrison. There was no telling when an adequate relief force would be able to be brought to bear, nor was there any indication how many Romulan troops were already on planet, how many more were going to be beamed down. Hoshi was already softly crying at the realization seemed to blanket the bridge. He heard Reed slam his fist into something, likely the console housing. Hernandez was slowly shaking her head, a sad frown on her face. Mayweather made a sniffling sound, wiping his eyes without looking up from his console

"Trip...we'll be back, we'll get you out of there, just hold on. All of you hold on. You hear me?"

"Understood Cap'n. Hell, I figured this was probably a one way ticket soon as I stepped out of the door. I'll make sure they have to pay for it. Suppose I better warn 'em I'm a screamer." Another wry chuckle.

T'Pol feels her face turning, the trembling lower lip, the burning of tears in her eyes. She can't lose him, not now, not after what she discovered. She stands up, suddenly, defiantly.

"Trip!" Her voice pierces the melancholia that is drowning the bridge and shatters his quiet stoicism.

"Hey, darlin'. Guess we can let the cat out of the bag now, huh?"

"Trip...I know you will make it through." Her voice trembles.

"I'll do my best, darlin'."

She could feel the eyes on her, feel the impending judgment, the shock, the anger from Archer that they had hidden it from him. She doesn't care, her mate is fighting for her world. The very thought of his death now, at this stage, even without the bond is the most abhorrent thing she can imagine. Their bond is manifest now in a different way. A bond that will grow and be so much more tangible.

"You will have to do better than that." The harshness of sorrow in her voice drops off at her next words, she pours all her love into it, "We're going to have a child. Trip...I'm pregnant."

**[! Author's Note !] No, this is not the end. **

**Just finished doing some revision, I wrote and edited the chapter while half-asleep as I do with most chapters, just noticed some of the errors.**


	9. Chapter 9

He couldn't fight the smile he felt spreading across his face, a little voice in his head goading that, son-of-a-bitch, he'd done it. There was silence on the other end for Enterprise, perhaps they were waiting for his response, perhaps they were all to stunned by T'Pol's revelation. He lowered his face, blushing now, and not so much smiling as grinning. He'd done it, they'd done it. They were going to have a baby, their own little baby. Surrounded, outnumbered, outgunned, and no hope for extraction; it was a less than ideal situation to be in as a new father-to-be. Up until this point he was thinking how nice it would be to survive, now he realized he absolutely had to. As harsh as the reality of the situation was, he had to smile, once again mouthing the words to himself. _A baby._ He swore he heard the low muttered chuckle from Mayweather, a barely audible, "Way to go sexual vanilla." He was trying to decide what to say, how to react, how to say what he was really feeling, and sadly he defaulted once again to being sardonic.

"Well, I guess I better hurry up and start wipin' out these Romulans. We're gonna have to show our baby where mommy comes from." He felt a little awkward, broadcasting this as he was for the whole bridge, the assembled Marines with him, and whoever might be listening at MAC-V to hear, but it didn't really matter, this was their moment, just him and T'Pol. Oh the hell she was going to catch, he felt a little bad for her, but if she was half as excited, half as happy in her Vulcan way as he was in his human way, there wouldn't be a thing that could be said to her that would crack her little shell of bliss.

"Taluhk nash-veh k'dular, k'diwa."

"Taluhk nash-veh k'dular, ashal-T'Pol."

He heard the slight sob of a sigh on the other end and then her quavering voice, "Your Vulcan is improving, commander Tucker."

He chuckled, "Right. Anything else before I get to savin' the planet, Cap'n?"

"Kind of at a loss for words here, Trip. Just stay safe, we'll be back with a fleet, I promise." Archer replied, his own voice a mixture of amusement, confusion, and a hint of irritation.

"Aye, sir. You don't go givin' my woman a hard time, you understand?"

Archer chuckled, "No more than necessary, Trip."

"Alright then, Barracuda, out." He turned off the ULF transceiver, handing the unit back to Rolston. The Marine seemed a bit stunned by what he had just witnessed or, rather, heard. What could he say to that? What did you say to a man who gets assigned a shit-detail that he never signed on for, pulled from the post he's supposed to be at, and told to complete a hopeless mission only to find out his girl is pregnant?

"Congratulations, sir." Was the best start he could manage.

"Still a few more months to go on that. Guess the first thing we gotta figure out is how to link up with macvee or local forces or somethin'." He gathered his equipment, placing it back in the mounting brackets on his LBE. "Get everyone in here, I gotta break the news to them." Rolston opened his mouth to say something, Trip could read the words on his face. "Not about the baby, Rolston, about what we're gonna do."

"Aye, sir."

* * *

><p>Cutting communications and leaving Vulcan, alone and defenseless against the onslaught was easily the most complicated thing Jonathan Archer had ever been forced to do in his life. The bridge had been deathly quiet during their break from atmosphere. Seven Romulan ships had attempted to intercept but the distance was too far to close and when Kelby reinitiated the protocols for warp 8.1 they had escaped faster than was possible for the Romulans to pursue. At present twenty eight Vulcan and eight Andorian cruisers were making their way to Earth to link up with MCS Task Force: Dragoon, the presence of the Vulcan High Command would definitely serve to give Starfleet a higher level of authority over how to proceed with the liberation of Vulcan. Eight Marine Expeditionary Units had already been formed, with the assets available, it was reasonable to believe that they could have the Romulan attack force crushed within five months.<p>

None of this, however constituted an immediate recourse for the forces stranded on Vulcan. About 900 Marines were in MAC-V Camp Kelly, of those he had no way of knowing how many were still alive. Minister T'Pau had mentioned she knew of at least seven that were killed in their evacuation to the garrison. Others had been injured during the Romulan assaults on the base proper, but T'Pau had seemed to believe that the casualties were light, a few injuries or a minor nature. Her praise of the MCS troops had been uncharacteristic given her pacifistic inclinations as Archer had remembered them from their short contact during his short episode serving as Surak's Katric Arc months prior. He couldn't help but imagine how the kind old soul would have felt about the invasion. He remembered the feeling of Surak's distress over what the Vulcans had done to one another during their warring centuries, this was almost like reliving that particular nightmarish time.

And of course there was Trip and the seven MARSOC Marines with him, trapped nearly twenty kilometers away from reinforcement or relief. They would have to fight their way to safety or rely on escape and evasion. MCS would of course want to make nice with the Andorians and Vulcans, try to draw them into a larger alliance as an outgrowth of the Task Force planning. In the grand scheme of things, the lives of 900 MCS personnel was nothing when compared to the safety and cooperation of the three races involved, but he was not sure he could see the overview if it meant losing his friend and nine hundred humans trying their hardest to defend a people with which they held no bond or blood. Well, except for where T'Pol was concerned of course.

How would he even begin this conversation? Shift change was in five minutes, he had asked, no, instructed her to report to his ready room when the change occurred. It was his way of having the talk he was dreading without seeming like he was calling her out. Hernandez would also be present, she, more than any other, could act as his anchor. Their relationship had often skated dangerously close to being in breach of protocol, but they had at least had the good sense to never go THAT far. The fact that T'Pol wasn't a member of the MCS forces meant her status was different and more inviolable. The fact she was a foreign national, now knocked up by one of his officers whom she had served alongside of could easily spell and end to Trip's career.

The chime at his ready room door snatched his attention, it wasn't shift change yet, but perhaps T'Pol would rather get it over with, Lord knows he had wanted to.

"Enter."

Rather than T'Pol the raven-haired Commander Hernandez entered, her expression was already shouting volumes. Whatever she was going to say he didn't really want to hear, but she had the right, as executive officer, to voice her opinion on this matter one way or another before the Sub-commander came to face the music.

"Jon..."

"Damnit Erika, I don't like this either."

"Hear me out."

He sighed, "Alright. I just hate to come down on either of them."

"Then don't."

"You know I don't have that option. I can't order the whole crew to pretend they didn't hear what T'Pol said. And what'll happen when she starts showing? We might can pretend nothing is out of the ordinary now, but what about four months from now?"

She arched her brows at him giving him the 'are you finished' look she had been giving him since their first fling fifteen years ago."Jon, can we at least hear her out?"

He opened his mouth, instinctively ready to rebuttal, but her words sunk in before his Broca's area could mobilize, "Okay..."

"Let me start the questions."

Another sigh was all he could manage, "Fine."

She gave him an understanding smile, it just helped reinforce that it still wasn't over between them. The burden of command just kept coming between them, but the fire was still burning. Sometimes they almost felt like an old married couple. In the broader aegis of family dynamic the oldest son and adopted daughter had somehow fallen in love, it was strangely taboo, uncomfortable, but at the same time it was comforting to see them find love, compassion, and understanding even if it was in each other's arms. Of course the fact that T'Pol was older than both of them just further confused the matter, but there was only so far they could take the family metaphor.

The door chimed again, they called out simultaneously. "Enter."

Something about the petite Vulcan already looked thoroughly chastened as she entered, hands behind her back, chin high, but her remarkably expressive eyes tipping them off that she was concerned.

"Thanks for coming to talk with us, T'Pol." Erika started. "Before anything else is said, could we hear exactly what happened?"

"Commander, I do not believe it is necessary to give a primer of mammalian sexual behavior." She sounded mildly taken aback.

"We don't want a play by play, T'Pol." Archer spoke up, then chuckled, "I don't think I'd ever be able to look at Trip the same way again."

"What we mean is, what started this whole chain of events? How long have you two been together or was this just a weird onetime thing?" Erika projected a compassionate tone that was likely unnecessary given T'Pol's Vulcan sensibilities.

"Given my respect for you both, I will try to explain but for me it is difficult to discuss something so, private." She took a deep breath, "During our time in the expanse the necessity of the Trellium-D dosing resulted in a strong loss of emotional control. The effects of P'narr syndrome exacerbated this problem. I became distraught and emotionally agitated, much of it, unfortunately, as the result of my inability to adequately provide you with support, Captain."

Her eyes took on a faraway look, "Commander Tucker had been seeking my assistance in the form of neuro pressure, ostensible because of the pronounced inflammation caused by scar tissue on his back. There were a number of situations where I became non-composed with him, and he allowed himself to become the outlet whereby I resolved those feelings."

"So it started out as casual sex?" Hernandez asked in a even manner, not judging as much as trying to discern where it was going.

"No, my outbursts were almost invariably violent in nature. I beat or attacked him, often becoming hysterical after the fact. He..." She lowered her face, he next words coming out softly, "allowed me to continue the abuse as it had a calming effect on me afterwards."

"Trip is a masochist?" Archer was too shocked by the thought to behave with any couth.

"No, he allowed me to continue the behavior as it helped lower the emotional turmoil I was experiencing."

"So he'd come over, you'd beat him up and then what?" Hernandez was being crass now.

"In the process of the emotional breakdown he would offer me physical comfort." Her voice was small, ashamed.

"Sex?"

"No, he would hold me until my composure returned. Once I was significantly balanced he would leave."

"And that's when you realized you were in love with him, wasn't it?" Hernandez said the words matter-of-factly but softly at the same time.

T'Pol rose her head, eyes doe like, lower lip quivering, "Yes."

Archer hated himself for it, but his next question was utterly necessary. "When did the relationship turn sexual?"

"When corporal Amanda Cole began making overtures towards Commander Tucker I began to experience jealousy and a fear that I would lose the closeness we had come to experience. It was at that time that I..."

"You slept with him to lock him down." Erika finished.

"That is, a correct assessment."

"So it's been going on since the Delphic Expanse." Archer half stated, half asked.

"Command Tucker was emphatic that we could not continue the sexual behavior, but we did still enjoy a less...invasive...closeness. It was also when our mate bond started to form."

"Wait..what?" Archer started at that. "What is a mate bond?"

"The mate bond usually begins in childhood between two who have been arranged to marry, the bond is formed through a series of touching exercises similar to neuro-pressure that makes the two mentally aware of one another. When a Vulcan mates...engages in sexual behavior...for the first time, telepathic connection to their partner is heightened to the point of complete mental awareness."

"So how did this begin with Trip? You didn't know each other as children." Archer further interrogated.

"I believe our neuro-pressure sessions acted as proxy to the initial child-hood contact, and our physical intimacy allowed me to form a mate bond."

"T'Pol, you were a virgin?" Hernandez seemed taken aback,

"Not in the same manner as is understood by humans, there are subtle physical differences. But if you are implying my first sexual contact was with Tri-...Commander Tucker, then yes, that is the case."

Archer furrows his brow, "About this bond...what is it exactly?"

"Vulcans are touch telepaths, the process of the first mating allows a heightened form of the telepathy to form. In short, mister Tucker and I became gradually aware of one another telepathically." She seemed more comfortable discussing this concept.

"Well, unless you're already seven months pregnant T'Pol, I have to assume that the 'physical' aspect of the relationship resumed at some point." Archer commented flatly, a skeptical brow creasing his forehead.

"When mister Tucker and I traveled to Vulcan..." She sighed, slow and ragged, "I was approached by my betrothed who demanded that we complete the kal'i'farr and be wed. In the tradition of our people I invoked the Kal'i'fee, the rite of combat whereby two potential mates could vie for me, I volunteered mister Tucker."

"What is this rite?" Archer asked evenly.

"Traditionally a fight to the death."

"Well, I guess the fact that mister Tucker was still drawing breath as of a few hours ago means he won." The sardonic comment wasn't usual for Hernandez.

"Before the rite, I contacted macvee which, in turn, contacted MCS command. As a result they agreed to allow mister Tucker to complete the rite but issued a strict order that he was not to kill Koss. He did, however, win quite handily." She let some pride slip into her speech.

"And the result?" Archer was beginning to see a set series of events fall into place.

"Under Vulcan law were are mated and wed. He is my spouse, there was an...expectation...that we consummate the bond."

"Well that's twice, but you still don't look five months pregnant, T'Pol." Erika interjected.

"That can likely be explained by our trip to Florida." Her skin flashed a slightly greenish tinge.

Both officers started instinctively, confused and concerned by the virdis flush of pigmentation.

"T'Pol, are you alright?" Hernandez stepped forward, ready to catch the sub-commander if she were to collapse.

"I am fine." She raised her head, the green deepening in her cheeks, forehead, and throat.

"T'Pol...are you...blushing?" Archer was trying to fight back a grin.

"During the recent retrofits mister Tucker and I were forced to leave the ship for the scheduled environmental systems maintenance. We went to his parents' home in Florida, they were away on vacation. We had an...eventful...evening." She swallowed hard, turning her face to the side.

"So you're about six days along?" He inquired.

"That is correct. Doctor Phlox detected the blastula after completing a scan of my neural pathways the afternoon before we reached Vulcan."

"And you are certain it is Commander Tucker's?" Hernandez thanklessly tread into that particularly uncomfortable area.

To her credit, T'Pol avoided being horribly offended, "Mister Tucker is the only being with whom I have ever been physically intimate."

Archer realized he was going to have to be the one to ask the important question, the single question that rendered all others of minimal significance in the greater scheme of things. The human question, the question that made every other concern regarding disciplinary action, career, and social stigma insignificant and transitory. Part of him feared to ask, feared to see what her response would be or if he was perhaps going too far into the fiercely private part of their lives. All of this, this whole can of worms had been opened because he, Jonathan Archer, had ordered Commander Charles Tucker III to undertake what was, for all intents and purposes, a suicide mission.

"T'Pol...do you love Trip?"

"To borrow the human phrase, I am 'crazy' about him, captain."

Hernandez broke into a quiet trilling laugh, "Sexual vanilla..."

The Vulcan turned, hands still behind her back. "I do not understand the reasoning behind that particular piece of nomenclature."

Just when Archer thought the gap was being bridged... "If you'll remember during our first tour of duty, Trip had a tendency to attract the attention of females quite readily."

"I still do not see the point of ascribing the characteristics of an orchid fruit extract."

It was moments like this when T'Pol was a delight as well as a pain. The inquisitive mind tempered by ignorance of Earth's customs and past and her innate desire to have it all explained to her made moments like this humorously awkward. It was unlikely she would understand the complex and almost in-born human knowledge, passed down through material culture and example for centuries.

"It's partially a racial sub-group joke, T'Pol." Archer explained, the amused smirk marring what was meant to be a serious face.

"I was not aware that mister Tucker's ancestry was linked to vanilla cultivation."

Hernandez was stifling a snicker, covering her mouth and turning away. Archer shot her the "You Judas, help me out here" look before turning back to the stoic Vulcan, forcing him to fight down the laugh that wanted to escape even harder. It wasn't even that this was particularly funny, it was just that her reaction was so...alien.

"It's a reference to skin color, T'Pol."

"There is no similarity between the coloration of mister Tucker's skin and that of the vanilla bean." She almost sounded condescending, as if to say 'silly humans, don't you even know the color of the plants on your world?' Part of him imagined her going into a long lecture about the differences and varieties of vanilla beans produced on Earth. Expounding on how in its natural state there was nothing about the vanilla bean that even began to resemble Trip's skin or hair colorations. When they finally made the reference to vanilla ice cream or cake, it would just make matters worse, the idea of white as opposed to black when the actual skin colors were far closer on the color spectrum than that.

"It's just a human joke T'Pol, don't read too much into it." He reassured.

And now, the painfully serious part of this informal meeting would have to begin, what to do with them? What could he do with them? If MCS had indeed authorized Trip to take part in the mating duel, then perhaps they were aware of what his victory would imply. If Vulcan considered him, as a human, T'Pol's rightful husband, what then could be said? Section 15 was in place to protect other races from the potential social and cultural contamination or stigma from becoming romantically involved with humans. If Vulcan law was willing to make this leap, what could be said for Earth if it was not similarly willing to cross that boundary?

"T'Pol, if possible I would like to speak to some of the high command about this, their assessment of the situation would serve to provide a guideline by which to make my recommendation to MCS."

She seemed visibly distressed by this, he wasn't sure if it was because her state would be revealed to her fellow Vulcans, much less her government, or because he had implied some sort of disciplinary action was imminent.

"I believe ministers Kuvak, Solon, and Tulas are in the best position to render a decision in this regard." She said calmly despite the readily apparent reservation on her face.

"Very well, we will need to speak to them."

* * *

><p>Sub-commander Surat had covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, having no reservation about displaying his disgust at what lay before him. Eighteen Vulcan corpses lay twisted and filthy in a ditch, their splayed bodies at militarily precise intervals, it was just as Valek had feared. The summary executions had begun, and who knows what else. The odors of death; blood, voided offal, and sweat drifted from the pit. It was not particularly strong, the stench of fear were not present, but the sight itself offended his mind, and he felt twinges of nausea as a result.<p>

To his left Centurion Valek stood stolidly, the muscles along his jaw bunching as he ground his teeth together, keeping his eyes raised and away from the Tal Shiar Captain and his Reman contingent to avoid staring daggers into them. Surat warred with feelings out outrage, disgust, sorrow, and anger in his mind, sure that Valek was nothing if not suitably enraged. The campaign had been hailed as the grand liberation of Vulcan and reintegration with their confused cousins, this was nothing of the sort. Surat needed to be a commander, he owed his men that much.

"I trust there is a reason you are showing us this...travesty...Captain." Surat managed, pulling every ounce of revulsion he could into a threatening hiss.

"These Vulcans are known to be associated with the humans our legions are fighting even now. They are traitors and deserve nothing less."

Valek's lips came back revealing a predatory frown of teeth eager to rip flesh. "These people are civilians you scum!"

"Centurion!" Surat snapped, pulling Valek's attention. "Return to the men."

Valek glared in disbelief, but saw the imperative in Surat's gaze. "Now, Centurion."

He didn't like it, but understood what his commander was doing, "As you command, sir."

He began walking towards his troops' position, spearing a grinning Reman with a deadly glare the whole way.

Surat turned back to the Tal Shiar Captain who visibly recoiled at the danger projected through the Sub-commander's eyes. "Captain, protocol states that all Vulcan we encounter should be brought to Legion command posts for possible interrogation before making charges of treason. If I find evidence of another 'field expedient' solution to perceived traitors, I will be forced to have my cohort treat you as a rogue element detrimental to the conduct of this operation." He walked forward menacingly. Surat had always been tall for a Romulan, standing eye to eye with a Reman easily. The Tal Shiar captain seemed even smaller now as Surat bent forward to put his lips inches from the cowering Captain's ear. "And I will gut you myself."

"Know your place, sub-commander." The Tal Shiar officer growled, trying to offset his sudden glut of fear.

"Oh, I do...we're in a battle zone...accidents happen in battle zones. Bodies get lost and never found again. And if anything should happen to me, let's just say Valak, my best Centurion, is easily worth thirty of yours, and he knows how to hold a grudge." Surat turned his back, walking away from the shallow grave, a calculated risk and an equally calculated gesture. In presenting his back he was effectively saying that his status, his family, and his troops left him with no fear of this Captain and whatever he and his immediate Tal Shiar over-seers could do to him. The calculated bluff worked, as he rounded the corner of the wall ahead of him he saw out of the corner of his eye the impotent furry on the captain's face. Taking ten more steps he stopped, hands bracing against the wall as he bent forward and vomited.

Valek standing a few feet away noted Surat's demeanor, ignoring his commander he looked back around the wall to see the Tal Shiar captain pointing and shouting, still obviously seething in anger. So it would seem that Surat could reasonably fake courage if he didn't actually possess it. That would be sufficient in the long run, many officers chose to affect and air of detachment and indifference to make up for their lack of courage or integrity, Surat would at least make a show of it for the sake of his men, it was respectable if not entirely reassuring. He approached the sub-commander who was still wiping his mouth.

"What did you tell them?"

"I said they would have an 'accident' if we found where they had committed any additional atrocities." Surat replied, not entirely sure where Valak had suddenly developed the wherewithal to speak to him so frankly and directly.

"Making enemies with the Tal Shiar can be dangerous, sir, even for one with your family background."

"I informed them if anything happened to me, my best and most loyal soldier would seek revenge in my stead." Surat's cheek twitched as he suppressed the urge to grin.

"Who would that be?" Valak's face adequately portrayed his utter confusion.

"Why you, of course, Centurion Valak." The sub-commander stated with casual detachment turning away to hide the mischievous grin.

Valak let out a grunting chuckle, "I will have to ensure that I never have to discharge that duty, so I guess food taster and poison tester will be added to the list of my responsibilities."

"Would that be a problem, Centurion?"

"Of course it would, you always did enjoy bland food, sub-commander." The Centurion snorted.

* * *

><p>It had not taken long for them to find trouble, within minutes of descending from the tower-like communication hub they spotted a Romulan detachment moving in the area. Twelve of the pseudo-Vulcan beings and five of the tall bat-faced monsters were in the area, weapons drawn and clearly on a hunting mission. It was very likely that they had isolated the tower as the source of the signal interruption and were on the way to eliminate any potential threat in the area. Trip quietly damned himself for never bothering to complete SERE after the 47 war, he had been extended the opportunity by MCS, which believed they were grooming him to be a Naval Special Forces asset, but he had turned it down to pursue his passion for engines. At that moment the advanced background in Escape and Evasion skills would have been nice. Thought it might not have mattered, they were being tracked by some sort of electronic device capable of tracking life signs, likely their equivalent of a scanner. They had led them for about three hours thirty five minutes, the Romulans must have been having a hard time isolating their life signs because they had yet to close within four hundred meters, but it was starting to look like his team was going to have to reduce them before they got themselves into a situation where they were possibly pinned in by Romulans on both sides.<p>

On the bright side they seemed to have solved the debate of who were the ones in charge, it was increasingly clear that the ones that resembled the Vulcans were the leaders and the bat-monsters were little more than grunts. Seventeen of them versus eight MARSOC trained MCS personnel was almost unfair for the Romulans, but if they could get reinforcements it could turn the tables on his team, so he would have to play this one smart. They had been moving along the edge of a quasi-industrial farm sector since leaving the PIN tower and were entering the barrier hills just before a residential area. They could use the terrain to their advantage, moving fast between the barrier hills and gaining elevation, if they moved quick enough they could catch the Romulans in the intervening fields and reduce them with precision fire. Manansala looked like he wanted to give his rifle a workout; the comparatively short Filipino was the Designated Marksman in his squad and was widely regarded as the absolute best shot out of Hayes' special forces company. If they could get some elevation, Manansala and his rifle would be able to wreak havoc on the Romulan squad.

They kept up their double time march for another thirty minutes, heading deep into the barrier hills and putting a substantial distance between them and their Romulan pursuers. The terrain was beginning to look increasingly familiar to Trip, not as if they had circled back to their original position, the terrain was different and all he could see now was the spread out houses of a residential district.

"Sir." Cummings said low as they paused to take a bearing, having opened up their lead on their pursuers of nearly 800 meters. "Looks like they're dog-legging into the residential area."

"Damn, can't let those bastards hurt any civilians on our account, keep 'em glassed, Manansala."

"Sir!" The Marine tapped Tanner and the pair dashed up one of the hills, setting up an observation and firing position.

"Plan sir?" Cummings inquired.

"Their scanner doesn't seem to be too accurate, so we need'ta figure out a way to pull them outta the residential area. If we schwack 'em up here in the hills, they'll have sehlats chewin' on 'em by supper time."

"How do you plan we get their attention, sir?"

"You and me'll walk up and say 'hi' and give 'em a welcome to the neighborhood." Trip grinned at the Sergeant, who returned it and shook his head.

"You're crazy, sir. I like it."

Trip let out a sharp whistle, the other Marines collapsed in on him. "Alright, fellahs, here's the plan; me and the Sergeant are gonna go let the badies that the party is goin' on over here. Set up on the revetment on that hill," He pointed to the next butte to the west, "We'll pull 'em into this fire lane," He gestured with a gloved hand along the winding hollow between the low hills in which they were standing.

"We'll light 'em up good. You are weapons free the second you get a clear shot, me and Cummings'll just have to stay on our toes." Trip keyed into Manansala with his throat-mic, "Popoy, you're weapons free, engage at your discretion."

"Aye, sir." came the reply through the squad net.

The remaining four marines sprinted over to the cover of a large outcropping from the rocky red dirt hill, taking firing positions in readiness for the ambush. Trip paused a moment, rolling up the sleeves on his fatigues jacket then took off running towards the Romulans' path of advance, Cummings hot on his heels.

"You know...sir...you lose...more water...that way." The Sergeant stated between breaths as they ran flat out to a large rock from which they could make contact.

"I know, but...I just...hate these jacket sleeves...can't cover my forearms...when I'm...wearin' gloves." Trip replied, he crouched, slowing his run, "I think we might have just got made."

Cummings crouched, bringing his rifle up, one of the bat-faces had turned in their direction, craning his neck and pivoting his head as if trying to catch a sound or smell. They were about two hundred twenty meters ahead now, moving along a raised road towards the widely spaced estates.

"Did I mention I haven't been in a fire fight like this since forty seven?" Trip whispered.

"Least you've been in one, if they'd sent Kelby down we'd be fucked right now...sir."

Trip smirked then immediately turned stony faced again, "Alright, let's light 'em up."

Trip brought the holographic sight over the outline of one of the taller hairless bat-men and squeezed his trigger, applying pressure until it broke again after trigger-return, then once more as the weapon cycled. His aim was not at its best, only two of the three shots found their target, one striking in the left hip while the other struck in the chest. He wasn't totally accustomed to the special forces version of the standard combat rifle, the heavier round delivered more stopping power in the form of hydrostatic shock but the larger powder charge required to propel the round at its improved range and with more force also resulted in more muzzle climb and recoil. Still, the 145 grain projectiles did more than an adequate job of stopping the creature which fell immediately. Cumming's put a single round into the head of one of the pseudo-Vulcans and another two into the upper chest of another standing close by. Both men started working the group over with quickly placed shots. The Sergeant struck two more of the fair-Romulans while Trip put another round into one of the bat people.

"Alright, fall back!" Tucker grunted as he fired another pair of shots at once of the smaller beings.

Turning on their heels the two dashed away from their concealment, following a path that would give them at least temporary defilade from their pursuers. Cummings cut eyes over to the engineer, as if to ask if the Commander thought they were being pursued or if, perhaps, the Romulans had held their positions to wait for casualty evacuation. A pair of barium nitrate green disrupter bolts sailed past them, biting into the dirt and heat fusing it into crude ruddy black glass.

"Guess that answers that," Tucker spun, switching the selector switch on his rifle and spitting a quintet of bullets in the direction of their pursuers. It wasn't enough to discourage pursuit, but it might keep them from presenting themselves to shoot back. Turning back, hand holding the weapon against his chest he sprinted to Cummings who had taken the lead. The butte they would duck around to bring the Romulans into the hollow loomed ahead, just past the embankment. Trip's muscles burned, he had completely forgotten about Vulcan's higher gravity which even now was making his 33 kilograms of gear weigh 47. Cummings was pouring sweat, mouth wide open, nostrils flaring, part of Tucker was praying that the Romulans, who weren't having to hump pounds and pounds of extra gear, were similarly unaccustomed to the higher gravity. Before reaching the embankment, they heard a sharp whistle and a distinctive crack, quickly followed by another, then another. Trip allowed himself a quick glance seeing two bodies spread out on the dirt behind the oncoming Romulans. They had wandered into Manansala's field of fire and the Marine was laying ferocious fire into them.

"Contact forward, eleven foot mobiles, five three zero meters." Tanner came over the squad net.

Another super-sonic crack accompanied by a muzzle report a split second later passed by as Manansala found another home for one of the 198 grain bullets from his weapon.

"Ten foot mobiles." Tanner again.

"Shit, Pappy, leave us some!" This from Corporal Weller, squad machine gunner, it was always the SAW boys who wanted most to get some. Manansala decided to make a point to the brash Weller; Trip heard the crackling "fhwip" as the round screamed by, danger close, the report of the rifle coinciding with the sound of the bullet as they reached inside the 1100 feet instant-perception sound area of the weapon.

"Nine foot mobiles."

Trip gasped, sucked in a huge breath then spoke in as even a tone as he could manage beyond the quavering in his voice from the running and the fact his lungs were screaming for air. "Immediate action drill, move forward and engage!"

Bounding up the embankment Trip reached the crest first ducking down he grabbed Cumming's forward stretched arm the moment he did so a trio of disrupter bolts sailed past where his head, neck and shoulders had been a moment before. Cummings swung his right arm wide, weapon in hand, snapping the selector switch to fully automatic he emptied the remainder of his magazine in the direction of the advancing Romulans as Tucker hauled him to the top of the embankment. The paused for a second, each taking a deep breath as they became suddenly aware of the adrenaline spike, each dropped to a knee and began laying fire into the charging enemy. Two more fell immediately, one of the Vulcan-look-alikes and another of the Bat creatures each fell prompting the others to break their advance and seek immediate cover. They scrambled ineffectively, it was suddenly apparent that these soldiers were not particularly well trained nor experienced war fighters.

Where rationality would have dictated they break and run, the Romulan soldiers held their untenable position only to find themselves quickly flanked by the remaining four MCS Marines. The fire fight ended abruptly as the remaining seven were swiftly killed by well placed shots from the ambush team. Trip stood, sucking air for a few seconds, his body aching from the exertion of the sprint from the rock they had first engaged the squad from six hundred meters away.

"Check 'em for weapons and intel and leave 'em where they lie."

Cummings seemed retrospectively concerned, "Sir, isn't it a little low to leave them out here?"

"Sehlats've got to eat too, Sergeant. By the time those critters have finished with them, whoever comes lookin' for them might not be able to tell who did 'em in." He straightened, rolling his neck then bent forward to start picking up the thermo-plastic casings that littered his fighting position. "Make sure you police your casings, fewer tracks we leave, the better."

The Sergeant resolved to say nothing more over the disposition of the enemy corpses, "Sir, its going to be sun down in approximately seventy five minutes, shouldn't we start looking for some form of shelter?"

"I know the area, Sergeant, there's a house I'm sure we'll be able to bivouac in for the night." The Commander replied, and slid down the embankment to begin inspecting the bodies and gathering up the grey bullet casings.

"Sir?" It was "Doc" Salouis, the team medic. The Marine was bent over the body of one of the Vulcanesque Romulans using a med scanner. "Sir, you should see this...these people are...well they're almost genetically identical to Vulcans. There are a number of differences in the DNA, but it's pretty close, freakishly so, actually."

"Well it would explain the ears and bad hair cuts," Tucker quipped, "might also explain why they've got a bone to pick with Vulcan, cultural Diaspora or some such thing."

Tucker looked over the carnage, wondering if the Romulan invasion fleet had any idea about what they were facing when it came to MCS Augmentees. If these troops were any indicator, even the weight of numbers wouldn't serve them well once relief forces arrived. Seventeen enemies, KIA and they didn't have a scratch to show for it, sure they had probably gotten incredibly lucky this time, and next time they would probably pay for it, but if the eight of them could do this, what was going to happen when the Romulans came up against a platoon sized MAC-V unit that knew Vulcan in and out? Still, this wasn't the time to postulate on how the battle for Vulcan was going to go, he thought he could hear Sehlats in the distance and the sun would be down in a little more than an hour. Plus there was still the casings up near the rock outcropping where they had first engage the enemy.

"Everyone police your brass and grab whatever you can get off the bodies?"

Nods, thumbs ups, the accenting "Aye, sir". They looked tired now, demoralized, the after action adrenaline crash was never as pronounced for Augmentees, but they were beginning to see their plight in a new way. They had days of this to look forward too, maybe weeks. Unless they connected with MAC-V there wouldn't be months, they'd all be dead long before then. He had to give them a ray of hope, it wasn't just his job as operation leader, it was his job as an officer and a human being.

"We'll get to sleep in doors tonight fellahs, but part of me is thinkin' I'll be in a world of hurt if I spoil y'all this early on."

Grins and chuckles accompanied his sardonic jibe, at least morale wasn't completely lost yet, they could stay live as long as they still had it, because morale was hope and hope could make humans accomplish the impossible.

* * *

><p>In the darkened suite, T'Pau focused on finding peace in memory. A little more than a year ago she had deigned to meet the Colonel in the small club located inside Camp Kelly. The building was squat and utilitarian, utterly devoid of beauty as almost all the buildings inside the base were. Two doors adorned the front side one bore the single word "pogue" and the other "fobbie" above was a rudimentary sign of reflective white lettering on brown laminated aluminum with the words "Maggie's Drawers". The only other visible decoration was a single solid red rectangular flag, on a short pole. She opted to enter through the door bearing the word "pogue" finding it the more logical door since a shorter nonsensical word was less inefficient.<p>

Two Marines had almost run into her, and stopped, stepping aside and nodded politely. Their less severe haircuts marked them as officers, a fact she had become aware of only a few months prior. They had addressed her by title with a polite "Minister" and had left the building, both smelled overwhelmingly to her sensitive nose of the bitterly floral aroma of hops used in human beer. There were perhaps thirty other humans in the building, gathered in groups of two to seven sitting at tables, playing the human game pool, or watching some competitive sport match on a large view screen. Behind the bar she noticed a single Vulcan male of indeterminate age but no sign of Colonel Shelby.

Music, chaotic and harsh in its tones played over the sound system, the singing was exaggerated with shouts and screams and she ignored the content of its lyrics. It was, like humans, ripe with excessive emotiveness and she found it disagreeable. She began to doubt the logic in having agreed to meet the Colonel in such a place, but crossed to speak to the Vulcan anyway. He regarded her with only passing acknowledgement and continued meticulously drying glasses with a small white towel. When she reached the long laminated wood counter the Vulcan spoke, not moving his head a millimeter and his face remaining logically impassive.

"Minister T'Pau, Colonel Shelby called ahead to regrettably inform you he would be detained, he will be arriving in approximately thirty minutes."

"Very well, I shall await him here." She had replied.

"As you wish, minister. Do you require anything?"

A young Marine, red faced and grinning approached the bar, his hair was mercilessly short. "Mister Kovess, you have to join us for a shot."

"The news of your first born is indeed fortuitous private Scanlan. I will join you momentarily." Kovess had remained utterly devoid of any hint of emotion, despite this the young serviceman smiled even wider.

"Thank you, mister Kovess."

The Vulcan pulled out a tray, arranging eight of the small glasses on top and with equal parts unnecessary bravado and precision poured from a bottle of amber, strong smelling liquor into each of the glasses. She had detected hints of grain and wood in the odor. Lifting the tray in a swift motion the traditionally dressed and stoic miened Vulcan crossed to the table of seven boisterous and loud marines, setting the tray down and waiting until they had all taken one of the small vessels before lifting one himself.

"To little Ricky Scanlan, may he be less of a fuck-up than his old man." One of the marines toasted, eliciting chuckles and guffaws from the table.

Kovess lifted his glass high in salute, "Peace and long life to your first born, private Scanlan."

T'Pau was shocked when she saw the Vulcan imbibe the liquor in time with the seven marines at the table. Upon swallowing several of the marines put an arm around Scanlan whose face was an even brighter red now, laughing and rough housing. Kovess had calmly collected the shot glasses on the tray and returned to his place behind the bar, his face still showing nothing but the most stringent mental discipline. T'Pau had not hid her shock when she questioned the Vulcan bartender.

"I was not aware that consuming alcohol was part of your responsibilities here."

Kovess hadn't allowed a hint of reaction to show when he replied, "It does not, I decided to consume the drink because I view the private as a friend. It is customary among their people to salute the birth of offspring with a drink. He could not be present for the birth, so he is forced to celebrate here. It is illogical to not honor the tradition."

"The birth of a child should not necessitate excessive emotionality."

"I felt great emotion at the birth of mine, minister." Kovess had replied with a detachment that would befit a Kolinahr master.

"How many children do you have?"

"I was bonded to my mate at the age of thirty nine, we currently have seven children. I have offspring as commemoration of each Pon-farr that has occurred since our Kal'i'farr." He declared without indication of either pride or shame.

"What is it like to work among humans at their least professional and least disciplined?" She had inquired, it was, in retrospect, a foolish question. The fact that Kovess continued to perform the job was a logical indicator he found it agreeable, but to this day she still remembered his reply.

"There is a saying often attributed to a human writer named George Orwell, it says 'we sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those that would do us harm'. I find this to be a true statement, and these marines are the rough men of which the saying speaks. If I might assist in the service and comfort of these beings, mercurial and illogical as they may be, I will do so and will continue to do so as I have for the past eighteen years."

The humans had often been seen as "rough men". Four years prior a marine corporal had stood accused of raping a young Vulcan woman, the event embarrassed MCS greatly and had almost led to the disbanding of MAC-V. The fact that the marine in question had not raped the young woman but had, rather, engaged in a consensual act of sexual intimacy with the Vulcan whom he had been attempting to woo for many months had been interrupted by the woman's father who immediately went to high command bringing a charge of sexual assault. When the truth of the events came to light, High Command had been forced to apologize to an equally contrite MAC-V. The unfortunate fate of the two would-be lovers had not been widely disclosed; the Corporal was court-martialed under a section fifteen violation and the young woman had opted to undergo Kolinahr rather than marry her intended mate. There were rumors that seemed to suggest that when she had not been able to achieve the necessary emotional suppression at the first stage of the training she had left the monastery one night and allowed herself to be killed by a le-matya.

A chime at her door snatched her from her meditation before she could remember the events of the later evening and her conversation with Colonel Shelby.

"Yes?"

"Minister, it is I, Kuvak, there is a matter in which your council would be appreciated."

T'Pau rose from where she had sat in the suite she had been accorded, it belonged to the Vulcan T'Pol, but she had relinquished it so that the she would be housed as her rank dictated. Crossing to the door she opened it with a press of a switch.

"Minister, what requires my attention?"

"There is a matter of Vulcan law which must be clarified. The stance of the High Command would be of great benefit, but we would have you offer your opinion." Kuvak elaborated.

"What is the matter of which you speak, minister?"

"T'Pol of Vulcan is with child by the human Commander Charles Tucker. Under our laws he defeated her intended mate, Koss, in the Kal'i'fee and the priests who performed the rite declared him her rightful mate. As a daughter of Vulcan it is against their military laws for them to be...involved. However if Vulcan law legally recognizes their union, then Starfleet may be forced to reconsider the plight of the Commander."

T'Pau pondered a moment, "I would meet this Commander before I could make an adequate determination, minister."

"That is not possible. Commander Tucker was the man who led the team that disabled the dampening field that allowed our escape, he is currently trapped on Vulcan."

* * *

><p>"Sochya eh dif, ko-mekh-tor t'nash-veh ko'telsu"<p>

T'Les was visibly shocked by the seven marines in her courtyard. Just before the Planetary Information Network had been locked out, a warning message from High Command had been broadcast. The winds passing through Shi'kahr would carry hints of the fire fights going on within. The weapons of the MCS Marines were crude, yet elegantly effective, and the sound they made could carry for miles. A low staccato rumbling, a pronounced thump, a high tapping, each sound could mean the death of one of the invaders, they were sounds of violence, combat, destruction. As a Syrranite, T'Les should abhor the sounds, but as long as she heard them it meant the marines were still fighting for her planet, for her people and it was strangely comforting. More shocking than the sight of the seven dirty, sweaty, and tired looking marines was the sound of her son-in-law's voice delivering the words of the ta'al in Vulcan.

He was standing in the corner of the courtyard, wetting a rag from the pot-fountain and wiping the dirt from his face. She had never seen him clad in combat gear, it was strange and somehow reassuring. From head to toe wrapped in the tools of war, she was once again reminded of what he was; he was bred to be a warrior, the fact that he had opted to be an engineer, a creator, a sustainer was a lens into his character. The instinctive Vulcan in her could sense the power, the latent danger in him. He was a fine mate, how fortunate her daughter was to find him, even if he was an illogical human.

"Live long and prosper, husband of my daughter."

His face contorted, lips going wide and arching upwards, showing teeth. What humans called a smile, T'Les remembered a time when she had made a similar expression, it was an uncontrollable reaction her husband had been able to draw from her. For humans there were many types of smile, something told her this one was embarrassed. "I really hate to be a bother, but is there any chance my men can rest here for the night?"

"Certainly. It is agreeable that you have come, my stasis unit is not functioning properly again." She meant it as a wry observation, a human would likely construe it as a joke.

So there were fundamental similarities between their species after all. "I should be able to get that taken care of pretty easily."

A familiar screeching howl in the distance forced T'Les to crane her neck. "Sehlats, they usually do not begin ranging this early in the evening."

"Yeah, well, a Romulan patrol had an accident." She could hear the intended joke in the human's words, but his face took on a kind of seriousness she had only ever seen during his battle with Koss at the Kal'i'fee. She felt a chill go up her spine, they had killed them then left the bodies for the Sehlats. It was perhaps a fitting end for invaders, but the idea was disturbing. At the Science Academy she had once heard a lecture on what a doctor named Selek had called the human "disconnect"; their instinctive logic driven savagery. It was what made them so dangerous when suitably backed into a corner or when something threatened something they cared about. Selek had cited cases from the Klingon Offensive seven years prior when overrun human units had fought with a ferocity that bordered on Feral save for the fact they still displayed intelligence and rational thinking.

"Ma'am, it's not my intention to sound rude, being that this is your home, but it would probably be safer for everyone involved if we went inside." Sergeant Cummings interjected with every ounce of politeness he could muster in his voice.

"Of course, please enter."

In turn each of the marines paid their respect with removed helmets and the thank yous that are born of discipline and privation. Before entering T'Les placed a hand on Trip's arm, halting him before they entered the house.

"How does my daughter, fair?"

"She is on Enterprise now, they are taking the High Command to safety." He paused, smiled wistfully, "And she is pregnant."

T'Les stepped closer, looking into her son-in-law's eyes, wanting to see the truth for herself, seeing the twinkle there, just like her husband's eyes had twinkled when she had told him that she was pregnant with T'Pol. How inadvertently similar were their peoples, or was this a standard response among all races?

"When did this occur?"

"Very recently, conception was no more than six days ago. We were on leave in Florida," He paused, T'Pol was her daughter, but it was intensely private, what they did to or with each other was not for anyone else, "My parents were on Risa so we appropriated their house for a couple'a days while they were doin' retrofits on Enterprise."

T'Les distinctly remembered their wedding night, the muted sounds of passion coming from T'Pol's old room in the late night when the newlyweds had believed her to be asleep. It was fitting that her daughter had wed a human, T'Pol would never be able to free herself of her emotions, would never be able to do more than keep them just below the surface, and if the facade of logic were to be disturbed, they would always come spilling forth. Koss would have eventually lost patience with it. T'Pol would likely have had to undertake Kolinahr, a task that would have either killed her or left her damaged forever. She was so much like her father, he had always been a storm of emotions under a calm layer of logic.

So, her daughter would have a child, it was an agreeable outcome. T'Les found the idea intriguing, satisfactory, even pleasant. She started to wonder about what traits would be displayed, if it could inherit its father's hair color it would be most agreeable. Still, something about the announcement seemed strange to her. She mentally did the arithmetic, six days would have been during transit from Earth to Vulcan, his reckoning was wrong.

"Mister Tucker, six days ago you would have been in route to Vulcan."

"Well, normally yeah, but I was able to crank warp eight point one out of the engines when we found out the Romulans were on the way. We had to get here as quick as possible."

Warp 8.1? It sounded impossible, Vulcan had only just built their first Warp 7.5 cruiser based on design specifications provided by MCS.

"You must forgive my asking, but what exactly are you doing on Vulcan?"

He arched his brows, pulling off his helmet, revealing a lighter colored band of skin just before his hair line, the sun and sand had left his face with a decidedly darker appearance. The private family nature of the conversation over, he held up a hand indicating they should enter and he would explain the matter. Stepping through the door she noted that the humans had placed their boots next to the door in an ordered line and were taking turns washing their faces at the sink.

"There are bathing facilities down the hall on the right if you wish to avail yourself of them." She stated, pointing towards the wing of the house that contained the bedrooms.

"Thank you very much, ma'am." they replied almost as one, the variations in tone, inflection, pitch and timbre far more pronounced among humans than Vulcans. Identical uniforms, identical haircuts, identical field implements and training, but so distinctly different otherwise.

"The Planetary Information Network was co-opted by the Romulans, they're using the interlink between the tower hubs to project a dampenin' field, its cutting most communication going out of the planet, prevents molecular transport lock unless you know the frequency, and preventing orbital targeting telemetry." Tucker began, snatching T'Les' attention back.

She turned to listen, giving him her undivided attention.

"MCS uses an ultra low frequency in our surface model communicators, doesn't get disrupted by the dampenin', so were able to get a distress signal from MAC-V, they had rescued most of the High Command and needed extraction." He set the helmet down, removing his gloves and dropping them inside the bowl of the head-armor. "They had to bring down part of the grid in order to get a lock to beam them out, which meant they needed an engineer with the insertion team. We also had to parachute insertion from twenty eight kilometers up, and I was the only engineer on Enterprise qualified, so here I am."

"My daughter is fortunate to have so complex a mate." T'Les allowed a hint of amusement in her voice.

"If by complex you mean possessin' an abundance of skills with little real-world application, I 'spose you're right." Trip grinned sheepishly, "Actually, I was wonderin' if you could take a look at somethin'. I know you work at the Science Academy, and I have a suspicion about the jammin' devices."

Pulling the portable console from his gear pack he placed it on the counter, pulling up the program copy he took from the PIN Tower device.

"See, this program is complex, but it lacks polish, sorta like someone without alotta experience, a student for example. Half the subroutines could be condensed, there is code that is redundant without needing to be, tons of program language just sittin' in between lines waiting to screw up the works if a single character shifts. " He turned the console to face his mother in law.

"I will take a look at this and see if I can recognize any of the programming hallmarks." T'Les assented.

"Great, I'll fix the stasis unit. And...thanks again. Hell, I'm not sure what exactly I should call you...mom, mother in law, ma'am?"

"You may call me T'Les, Charles."

The human grinned, "Right, thanks for everything, T'Les."


	10. Chapter 10

Wayne Shelby had allowed his eyes to drift shut, thinking he would steal a few minutes to himself for a power-nap. Fifteen, twenty minutes would be more than enough to relieve some of the fatigue, help him to cope with the frustration a bit better. It had been oh dark twenty when he closed his eyes and even now as he tried to complete the waking process at the gentle prodding of First Lieutenant Gayle the digital chronometer on the wall was registering 0417. He couldn't remember what he had dreamed about, but he knew that he had, it was maddening in its own right, it was like he couldn't adequately command his own brain.

"Sir, we had movement outside the wire at zero three fifty eight, they answered the pass challenge."

"Reichauer's squad?" Shelby asked hopefully still wiping the errant rheum from his eyes.

"No sir, they're waiting for you in the briefing room. Do you need anything sir? Coffee?"

"I'm fine, L T, just didn't mean to sleep that long."

Shelby rose, wincing as the shrapnel wounds pulled, the tender flesh sealed in field expedient matter with a quick pass of a dermal regenerator and some medical adhesive. He yawned, giving his eyes one more quick wipe then straightened his MCUUs and proceeded to the briefing room. He was guessing it was probably Vulcan Commandos, though how they had managed to answer the pass challenge set him to wondering. These Romulan bastards, well some of them at least, looked pretty close to Vulcans. He pulled his side-arm from his thigh holster, checking to ensure a round was chambered and replaced it, he wasn't going to take any chances that whoever they were might be infiltrators.

Entering the room, he was immediately struck by what he saw. Two males, each clad in traditional Vulcan garb of long robes over combat utility trousers, boots, body armor with LBE, and an extensive weapon load-out. One was human, the other Vulcan, each sporting pronounced five o'clock shadow and the demeanor of special operations gun jockeys. The dust evident on their clothes and goggles perched on the flat dark earth ball caps they wore made it immediately evident they had been in the field for days prior to the invasion.

"Oh shit..." Shelby swore, "So I take it you're Mister Cardholder and you're Mister Doe? First name John?"

"Jane, actually." The Vulcan replied with a quickness that marked him as having spent extensive time with humans, he had developed a sense of humor.

"Colonel, sir, I'm mister Gaddson, this is mister Suvak, Special Intelligence Directorate section thirty one."

Shelby would have to question what a Vulcan was doing in section 31 later, for the time being he was relatively certain they hadn't stopped by for the hospitality.

"If you gentlemen need supplies, we've got a more than adequate reserve." The Colonel stated, flatly, not sure how comfortable he was being around the spooks.

"Thank you for the offer, sir, but we're here with intel on the situation." The human replied.

"Six days ago we decided to follow up on a lead High Command seemed to overlook. We were tracking unusual communication signals in the highlands surrounding Shi'kahr." The Vulcan pulled out a folded plastic laminate map, opening and pointing to a series of points marked with a red pen. "At all but one of the sites we inspected we found nothing but signal boosters and pattern buffers. We disabled seven sites and remained in wait to see if anyone would arrive to repair the equipment."

"The equipment did not conform to what we would expect from Vulcan technology and it certainly wasn't MCS issue." Gaddson clarified.

"At the seventh site, a trio of indigenous personnel arrived to repair the equipment at which point we attempted capture." Suvak continued.

Shelby cocked a brow, "Attempted?"

"The indigenous persons produced weapons and attempted force of arms, two were reduced immediately, the third expired shortly there-after." The Vulcan explained with a strange perfection of Surakian detachment compounded by what had to be intensive special forces training. "What we did find, which puts current matters in better perspective is that all three were, indeed, Vulcans. In light of the Romulan invasion this would seem to indicate that this is not merely a matter of infiltration, there are collaborators here on Vulcan."

Shelby frowned, "Any background?"

"One of them was confirmed to be a student at the Vulcan Science Academy." Gaddson once again added.

The Colonel rubbed his chin, this was a lot to consider, collaborators on Vulcan meant that it was suddenly harder to emphatically trust the populace, and if his Marines were able to break out of Camp Kelly to begin operations against the Romulan forces, there would be concerns over pacifying the area. "When did this occur, gentleman?"

"Three days ago, we remained in the field in an attempt to apprehend any other possible individuals who might respond to the damage we had caused." The Vulcan seemed to be giving the brief, making Shelby wonder what the human's purpose was.

"Thank you, gentlemen. Any chance you would be able to follow the Science Academy lead?"

Gaddson spoke up this time, "With all respect, Colonel, shouldn't our first priority be securing the High Command?"

"Already done, we secured twenty two members of the High Command, including all the ministers and Enterprise beamed them out eighteen hours ago."

The human let out a sigh of relief, "How did they bypass the jamming?"

"Para-inserted an engineer with a marsoc section, they created a window in the dampening field." Shelby replied, more than a little amused that for once he had more up-to-date intel than the spooks.

"Any word on the engineer and his team?" The Vulcan cocked a severe brow.

"We've had zero contact with them, I believe it might be safe to assume they were overrun and are likely KIA." Shelby offered with a dour expression, hating to think the brave son of a bitch had died. The bit of his communication with Enterprise they had picked up seemed to indicate he was mated to a Vulcan woman and she was pregnant with his child. It was a shame, for Marines it came with the territory, but he hated to see a Fleet officer or enlisted man get schwacked trying to help the marines do their job.

"I don't suppose you tried to contact them, did you Colonel?" Gaddson spoke in a way that didn't imply recrimination.

"No, I've got about twenty broke-dicks right now, and we've been getting the grease for thirty eight hours straight now, we didn't even bother trying to get them on the net. Besides, they might be so far in the suck that contacting them at this point might just be the good intention that finishes them off."

"Point taken, sir."

"Any chance you hooked up with any local forces units on the way in?" The Colonel inquired, hoping that perhaps there were some commandos with which MAC-V could coordinate.

"To be perfectly frank, colonel, most of them are combat ineffective on a good day." Suvak replied with uncharacteristic candor regarding his countrymen.

Shelby couldn't take it anymore, "Alright, I've got to ask, mister Suvak, what are you doing with section thirty one?"

The Vulcan operator looked over at his human counterpart, arching a brow prompting the human to give a quick nod. The Vulcan turned back to Shelby, hands still resting on the stock of the MCS issue assault rifle. "Five years ago I was tasked by a joint High Command, MCS strategy development team to assist in advanced MAC-V training programs. Since majority of the training and acclimation occurs on Earth I was assigned to a training cadre at twenty nine stumps."

Shelby immediately picked up the slang term for the Twenty Nine Palms Air Ground Combat Training Center, this was getting interesting.

"I found MCS training to be logical and effective, I petitioned to receive access to additional training programs and was presented with the opportunity to attend the Mountain Warfare Training Center. Later I was offered the chance to attend MARSOC training and the Leadership course. I suppose it would be safe to assert that I had a greater appreciation for the discipline, skill, and effectiveness of your armed forces than that of my people. Mister Gaddson approached me on behalf of Special Activities Division four months after I completed the Leadership program and I found the concept of working with MCS Special Intelligence, agreeable."

Shelby let his mouth hang just a little, not sure what would be appropriate to say before finally deciding that every modicum of protocol had been turned thoroughly sideways, "You're crazy."

The Vulcan allowed the thinnest hint of amusement onto his face, "As I am told almost daily, Colonel."

* * *

><p>Trip had taken first watch while he had worked on T'Les' stasis unit. It was, indeed, on the fritz once again, and he decided he would track down the problem once and for all. He had to admit that her calm about the situation on Vulcan was admirable, in the same situation he would have likely been a basket case. He knew she was a syrranite and that having armed Marines in her house had likely been uncomfortable for her given their pacifistic nature. Of course, logic would dictate that when attacked by a hostile force it made sense to defend one's life and beliefs. In this case, MCS was taking up arms in proxy thus allowing her to maintain her personal aversion to violence.<p>

He completed the task two hours before his watch ended. A bad chip in the unit's control board was causing an unrestricted power flow that kept shorting out the unit. The fix had been appreciably simple and there was little chance it would happen again. He spent the remainder of his watch checking his equipment and cleaning his weapons, the due diligence of a combat zone. Quietly, mostly to himself he began softly hum, trying not to think about how hopeless he secretly felt. At the moment he was relatively certain he would sell his soul to any applicable entity if he could just be back in that big soft bed in Florida with T'Pol curled up against him, sleeping softly. Maybe it was exhaustion, but right now the entire world was numb to him. He couldn't smell anything, couldn't taste anything, even sound seemed strangely off to him. Maybe he could close his eyes and wake up to find that it was all a dream, they were still asleep, her heat radiating into him making him think he was in the hot desert of Vulcan. To wake up again looking into that face, feeling her mind gently brushing his, the small narrow hand resting on his chest, her leg thrown over his, cheek nestled against pectoral, hair gently tickling shoulder. To have that again...that kind of bliss, that kind of unadulterated happiness, that kind of perfect and unsullied joy.

_I'll kill every Romulan on this planet if I have to._

He didn't have any illusions on what he was, a practical application academic who could double as machine-operator when you put weapon in hand. He wasn't a warrior like these Marines who had spent all of their adult lives to this point honing their craft, turning them into precise and effective instruments of warfare. This was the path MCS had wanted for him, he was damn good at it. He had received the Bronze Star for actions on Horst, the first award star was on Taugus, and again with Valor device on Qualor. His actions at Khitomer had earned him a Silver Star as well. They were pinning the award devices and ribbons on faster than he could update his uniform at one point there, and it never really seemed certain whether they were trying to turn him into some sort of Starfleet tactical war-god or grooming him for placement with the _Degüello_ or what, but he eschewed it all, just so he could work on engines on the _Enterprise_.

He never would have met T'Pol if he had followed the path MCS tried to make for him. He never would have known what he would have missed out on. They could keep all the awards, the extra pip, the increase in pay grade, they could have all of that as long as he could keep his beautiful little Vulcan who was going to have his, _his_, baby.

The stark realization that he was becoming obsessed struck him like a freight train...loaded with trucks...that were full of bricks. When did she become the most important thing in his life? When had he placed his friends and colleagues of so many years on a back burner, when had the ship stopped being his "best girl"? The better question was whether his current melancholy was brought about by exhaustion, stress, or his persistent hypoglycemia. With the exception of stress, there were easy solutions for these problems. As to the question about T'Pol, maybe it was just that love was like that, a kind of endless hunger that could never been satisfied, an itch you just couldn't scratch. Persistent, immutable, and un-ending; of course that would also mean that he was never really in love before which was more than a little sobering.

He opened a food replacement bar after finally realizing he was developing a case of the shakes. Mild light headedness and a subtle burning feeling through his torso that radiated down into shaking, clumsy fingers...the tell tale signs of hypoglycemic shock. He took a bite and rolled his eyes in displeasure, the chalky texture gave way to a tacky chewiness as he felt the densely packed nutrient and calorie paste rubbing against his teeth like he was gargling dry mortar. The taste was only a slight improvement over the texture, somewhere between salty and sweet with nothing that began to approximate a natural flavor except for the sulfur taste of egg yolk. The thing really needed a disclaimer that stated that the "flavor" indicated on the packaging was meant solely as an approximation or point of reference whereby an individual could imagine what they were eating. For his money, he had never tasted "cookie dough" that tasted anything like this and wondered if, perhaps, the original point of comparison had been made from the taste of dog biscuits.

Over the years he had developed a technique to deal with the taste, he would force the food away from the tongue, chewing with the back molars and then swallowing quickly so the slurry could never become sapid. Of course this made eating a chore, he enjoyed flavors and when combined properly there was no specific taste he did not enjoy, however there was nothing about these bars that was combined properly except from a nutritional stand point. The sugar alcohols did their job, giving the elevated insulin levels something to play with but they had left him feeling just ever so slightly queasy.

Setting the subjectively fetid supplement down he lifted his rifle, pushing a freshly filled magazine into the now clean well and slapping the slide release, chambering the first of twenty of the heavier-than-standard special application rounds. Special application was, of course, a euphemism for "kill it faster", at 8.6mm they had roughly twice the muzzle energy and a catastrophically larger wound track than the standard 6.8mm projectiles standard for Marine combat rifles. He turned his head at the sound of rustling from the hall and saw T'Les looking into the kitchen/sitting room area, apparently disturbed by the metallic snap of the bolt carrier chambering the first round. The Marines hadn't budged an inch, the sound wasn't unusual to them and their sleeping brains processed the noise accordingly. A twig snapping could bring them all to full wakeful alertness, but the comparatively loud sound of a bolt in the upper receiver of an assault rifle didn't bother them a bit.

_Sorry._ He mouthed to T'Les sheepishly, who crossed to where he sat, a robe wrapped around her pajamas, eyes darting to the partially finished food replacement bar still sitting in the split open foil-cellophane wrapper.

"If you were hungry, Charles, I would have prepared you something. " She said quietly as not to disturb the seven Marines sleeping in a neatly ordered row on the floor.

"It's fine, T'Les, I have hypoglycemia so I just needed a little something to equal out my blood sugar level. I didn't mean to wake you."

"I was not asleep." she offered as a platitude.

"Well, my watch isn't over for another forty five minutes if you wanna talk." He sat down the rifle, deciding that working on the martial implement in front of his pacifist mother-in-law might be discourteous.

"That would be agreeable."

* * *

><p>T'Pol retired to her quarters thoroughly exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally. The Ministers had requested the presence of her, Captain Archer, and Commander Hernandez after she had completed her shift. She had not been fortunate to find the time to center herself before facing this latest round of inquisitors and she found herself coming before them already irritated and overly emotional. Instinctively, as she had for months now, she tried to fall back into the calm he provided her through the bond to find nothing there. The sorrow of it had caused her to break during the questioning, becoming instinctively territorial and defensive in regards to her mate. It had been unseemly, prompting two of the seven ministers to insist that human emotionality was to blame, effecting her through the mate bond.<p>

Another had questioned if it was possible for the mate bond to even form between a human and a Vulcan, which prompted T'Pol to insist it was. Then had come the question she dreaded, could she sense her mate now? She had evaded the question skillfully, her mind immediately snapping at the question like a steel trap. The fact they had not been accorded the month of acclimation that was common for Vulcans, the intervening distance had made it impossible for her to sense her mate. It wasn't a complete lie, but neither was it the total truth; how could she describe and make them understand the horrors that lay in the human mind? That instinctive darkness that shredded through her logic and left her fully exposed to the terrifying beauty of that strangely primal intelligence. She had suddenly found herself wondering why the episode had been triggered? She had felt just as much anger from him before, during one of the boarding actions by the Reptilian Xindi, but the dark symblance of Trip, _her_ Trip had never been there. She was on the brink of asking to be excused so that she could surreptitiously slip back to her quarters and test a theory when Minister T'Pau finally spoke up. She had feared this, T'Pau was one of the foremost of the Syrranite movement, and she would doubtlessly be harsh in judgment by dint of MCS's status as a military organization.

Just about everyone assembled had been shocked at T'Pau's logical argument in favor of the coupling, citing Commander Tucker as one of the "rough men ready to commit violence on our behalf." Her constructive, spoken quietly without rhetorical flourish except for the poetics regarding MCS as "rough men", brooked no rebuttal or cross examination from the assembled ministers. Kuvak spoke up noting that Vulcan law never specified that a husband and wife had to be of the same species and that a mate was required only to fulfill the responsibilities dictated by tradition. Minister Solon then noted that, regrettably, Tucker, as a human, would never be able to fulfill the requirements of the Pon Farr, which forced T'Pol into the uncomfortable admission of what had occurred the previous week leading up to her pseudo-Plak Tow and the revelation that she was pregnant by the Commander. The ministers looked to one another with what she could see was agreeability with the new dynamic this presented. Excusing themselves for a moment they stood and converged in a small knot, talking amongst themselves for what seemed a painfully long three minutes before returning to their seats and announcing that under Vulcan Law and custom the marriage was legitimate.

Archer breathed a sigh of relief and Hernandez grinned unabashedly. She had immediately began her retreat to her quarters when she remembered that they were currently being occupied by minister T'Pau. In concession to her perceived status with Trip, the Captain had reassigned T'Pol to Commander Tucker's quarters and she quickly made her way to the section in which they lay. She all but snuck past a few crewmen passing through the corridor before she slipped into the room and prepared herself to meditate. She couldn't peel off her boots fast enough and upon sitting on his immaculately made bunk she allowed her thoughts to slip inward. She focused on a sensation deep in her unconscious mind, an area that seemed to be located, physically, in her womb. There was a haze, thick and disorienting, seemingly lit by tinges of fluorescence. There was a consciousness at play here, not self-aware but aware none-the-less; the sub-instinctual mind of a separate yet integral organism. It was not wholly different from a parasite or symbiot, a being that required her to live and to it the world was the warm protection of her uterus.

Through the fog of a diffuse and unfocused existence she saw a bright point of light and moved towards it, breaking into a clearing of the fog and freezing in mental horror. The small light, shining with defiant luminosity sat still, nestled in the roiling oily darkness of her mate's sub-conscious. The Trip-shaped thing sat still, the smoky wisps that formed its shape danced slow and lazily as it remained passively warding the refulgent ball of cells.

_Trip!_

The thing turned its head, the slow roll of the oily smoke suddenly became quick and agitated and it loosed its almost mechanical sounding blaring roar. She fought through the fear and wonder, forcing her mental projection of herself forward, towards the thing that cradled her offspring-to-be. It moved not further but released the blast of sound again, louder and more threatening.

_It is our child._

The thing wavered, the wisps of smoke once again slowing. She approached closer which invited a louder more angry bray, this time it seemed to move as if to attack, but refused to abandon its charge.

_It is MY child!_ She bellowed back.

It lowered its head, mollified by her outburst and made no additional attempt to move the coils of oily smoke twitching and dancing in arrhythmic discontent. She forced her telepathic avatar to sit across from the thing, reaching her hands in slowly to assist the thing in cradling their only vaguely conscious proto-being offspring. Upon making contact the world exploded into blackness, everything ceasing to exist but a vaguely grey outline of a being, hunched with hanging head, arms braced across knees, clutching an instrument of war, one leg extended, the other drawn up at the knee.

_Trip?_

_T'Pol!_

It was a shout across vast emptiness. The sound echoing as from across a windless chasm accompanied by tinkling sonance as if a sea of glass was set gently a-sway with each breath. She forced herself forward, trying to run to him, wanting to touch him, to hold him, to feel him close to her. She felt herself moving but the distance did not change, no matter how she tried to reach her mate some force holding her at bay.

_Trip! I cannot reach you!_

_Baby, baby...I can hear you, I can feel you._

_It must be the distance, I understand what happened now._

The shape still didn't move and she suddenly realized it was a representation of his sleeping form as it existed in the world beyond the telepathic bond, she could feel the subtle exhaustion radiating from the form.

_T'Pol..._

_Trip, please listen; your sub-conscious it is what has been interfering with the bond. I assimilated it after the contact with it, and since that point it is instinctively trying to protect the child._

She heard a chuckle_, Okay T'Pol, I'm startin' to think this is all in your head and I'm just a projection in your psyche. How can you be sure I'm me?_

She pondered this for a moment, arriving at a suitable test. _How do you know I am not just a projection in YOUR mind? You are sleeping, after all._

_Because if this was my dream you'd be bare-naked on a beach towel with nothin' but a bottle of Puerto Rican rum on a Blue-June night._

T'Pol couldn't tell if her flush was physical or just some mental apparatus that associate the sensation with moments of the delicious heat caused by the combined sexual excitement and embarrassment that only he could effectively elicit from her.

_Perhaps we should put that on the itinerary for our next shared liberty._

She heard the chuckle again, _Okay, I'm convinced, you're T'Pol alright._

_And I have a similar amount of certitude that you are, indeed, Trip._

_The bond isn't back though._ The certainty in his voice stunned her. How did he know? How could he understand? She suddenly understood how intensely strong their bond had been, despite the crude nature of it, not tempered by the proper isolation and meditation of a traditional mate pair. She had never attempted a mind meld with him, which would have certainly strengthened it further or, at the very least, allowed for a heightened level of connection.

_It would seem that is the case. The connection is bridged by the child, as it develops further it will likely allow the proxy bond to grow stronger until we are eventually able to re-establish the bond on our own._

He was silent a moment, as if taking it all in. _So I guess no frisky business in front of the baby, huh?_

She smiled, _I doubt he or she would remember. Does not human models of reincarnation believe the final act one witnesses before the soul transitions is one's own conception?_

_Somethin' like that, but it just so happens I'm not a Hindu, darlin'._

She felt the bond fluctuate, her surroundings, his quarters seeming to flash before he still open eyes for a moment.

_Trip!_

_It's alright baby, I'm bein' woken up, somethin' is goin' on here._

_Trip!_

_It's okay darlin', I love you. And your mom is just fine, I'll explain late-_

She found herself back in the conscious world, trembling softly, lines from errant tears creating a pair of smooth moist lines on her cheeks. She felt a multitude of emotions, each in measured amounts; joy, sorrow, longing, worry, calm. Together they blended into a wondrous and delightful mixture of perfectly balanced emotionality. Logic was not necessary to suppress the feelings because they balanced one another, still the soft serenity of the smile on her face and tear stained cheeks would not sit well with the High Command whom were doubtlessly going to inundate her with questions of both a professional and deeply personal nature over the next few days, and, of course, she mustn't alarm the crew. Rising from his bunk she found herself very, almost uncomfortably, hungry and craving something she couldn't quite pinpoint...wait...craving? Vulcans did not crave, yet she felt a pronounced need to consume something, something alien, the likes of which she had never consumed before. Quickly and impatiently slipping on her boots she exited the quarters, inured to the stares of passing crew as she made for the sickbay, Phlox would undoubtedly have answers for this.

Indeed he had, she stood in muted shock at his assertion; the idea was simply barbarous. His suggestion had been a consistent bone of contention between their peoples for decades now, neither side willing to budge on the persepctive.

"Out of the question." T'Pol made it abundantly clear that his diagnosis was summarily rejected.

"Humans are obligate omnivores, sub-commander. While 'cravings' in this stage of a pregnancy are highly unusual it is entirely possible that, given the mixed species heritage of the offspring, your body is beginning to compensate in the early stages." Phlox was antithetically adamant in his assessment and the rightness of his hypothesis.

"It is illogical to assume the consumption of flesh is necessary for the health of the embryo, all of the nutritional properties can be acquired through other sources." She replied with a hint of condescension.

"But most certainly not in a suitably natural form designed for ease of digestion, absorption, and synthesis into the system." Phlox countered archly, all but reminding T'Pol that she was treading into _his_ waters.

"Vulcans do not consume flesh, doctor." She replied, flustered by the fact that he was correct.

"Choose, not to consume flesh, there is no morphological or biochemical mandate that prevents you from doing so."

"If I were to be seen by the High Command it would be, problematic." She deprecated.

"T'Pol...you are entering into a strange new world. You are the first recorded instance of a Vulcan carrying a half human child, perhaps the first Vulcan to carry anything BUT a pure blooded Vulcan. There are concessions that will have to be made in the interest of the part of the offspring that is human. If the High Command cannot accept a premise like that, then they are not worthy of your concern." Phlox applied the gentleness of his genuine care to his voice, speaking in a way that hypnotized those made privy to it. It allowed for no argument, no counter, because it was the voice of unconditional caring that only a being as big-hearted and loving as Phlox could be.

She had to remind herself that the bundle of cells that was ordering and dividing inside her was not just hers, it was Trip's too. He had not just provided the catalyst for its creation, he had provided half of everything it would ever be, this included a mixture of human needs. The child would require more affection, more understanding, perhaps even more discipline, it also required some of the elements that would help it grow and that included things distasteful to her. Part of her wondered if the child would be born with a taste for meat and how it would be handled in Vulcan culture...would the child even be raised in Vulcan culture? If their offspring manifested a majority of human traits then it was entirely possible that it would never be fully capable of assimilating its mother's culture, similarly it might never be able to fit into the human world either. What fate would lie in store for the product of synthesis?

"What do you suggest, doctor?"

"Baby steps, so to speak, sub-commander!" The Doctor smiled, "You should start with a very small amount of a red meat, sirloin beef for example, no more than fifty grams or so."

"Would not ichthyoid be preferable?"

"Not as easily digested. I can prepare a menu course for the mess to produce in a manner that can be covertly slipped into your usual fare." Phlox picked up a PADD and began typing away. "There, this should suffice for starters. The ship's Chef should be able to produce this fairly simply." He commented as he sent the medical dietary directive.

"Thank you, doctor." She replied with more than a little chagrin born of her own behavior which now seemed horribly unsightly.

"T'Pol, I understand how new and even a little frightening this must be for you. I remember when my first wife was pregnant with our first child. I fussed over every detail, worried about everything I did, and I wasn't even the one that was pregnant." Phlox reminisced blithely. "It is completely normal to feel apprehension, even as a Vulcan."

"I will attempt to follow your advice with less necessity for...cajoling, doctor. I simply request that you not consider excessively histrionic movies and swearing part of my pre-natal duties." She replied with arched brows.

Phlox chuckled softly, "I'm sure Commander Tucker will manage enough of that for the both of you."

* * *

><p>"Commander"<p>

_It's alright baby, I'm bein' woken up, somethin' is goin' on here._

"Commander, wake up sir."

_Trip!_

_It's okay darlin', I love you. And your mom is just fine, I'll explain late-_

"-er..."

"Sir," It was corporal Rolston, voice barely above a whisper, "we have unknowns at the front door."

Trip bolted upright as the modified MAOA kicked into high-gear. "How many."

"Seems to be four, sir."

"Follow me." Trip crossed out of the room whose corner he had co-opted to sleep in. It was T'Pol's old room, before him the bed on which they had consummated their marriage in the Vulcan tradition. Passing through the door he took and abrupt right and came to a small foyer that lead to a door exiting the back of the house into the rear courtyard. Opening the door slowly he slipped outside, snapping the safety off his rifle. Cool desert air whipped around him, pulled him even further into wakefulness as he made it to the two and a half meter high wall. Jumping up he caught hold of the wall and hoisted himself up and over, he landed in a crouch and brought the weapon up to his shoulder. Rolston landed behind him a moment later as he began down the side of the wall, slip stepping back and away from the wall to corner effectively. Rolston followed the MOUT drill cornering behind Tucker, sweeping the flank with his weapon. The Commander was moving quickly, more so than was judicious, the corporal was trying to reckon as to why he was moving with such speed until his nose detected the sour smell of aggression. Rolston felt the adrenaline, serotonin, and 5-DHEA hit his bloodstream as his own modified MAOA gene activated. He was barely aware of his actions, the movement, the scanning of the terrain, the act of closing with the possible-enemy foot mobiles.

"T'Les T'Kehr, shar-tor fam du-kelek." One of the four foot-mobiles said to a wide-eyed Mrs. T'Les at the door.

"Nekhau." The Commander growled to Rolston's right.

Within a flash Tanner had bodily lifted the Vulcan woman aside carrying here clear of the fire-lane as Cummings, Weller, and Manansala brought suppressor augmented side-arms to bear on the intruders at the door.

"Nekhua!" Tucker growled again.

Rolston saw the Vulcan directly in front of the Commander turn and lunge, strangely the Marine found himself amused at the concept. The lirpa was only able to raise part way before it was caught between the magazine well and picatinny mounted forward angle grip along the barrel shroud. The commander side-stepped and brought the heal of his right hand sharply across the Vulcan's throat followed by a hammer-fist blow to the solar plexus. The remaining three started as their comrade fell to his knees, choking and coughing grasping at his throat facing flushing a dusty green color as he tried to regain breathing control. The threatening barrels of the human weapons stopped them in place as they logically concluded that if their deaths had been intended, none of them would still be breathing.

"Charles, they're not a threat." T'Les protested.

"T'Les, why would armed commandos come to your house and tell you it wasn't safe?"

The stopped in mid-step; he was right, it didn't make any sense, they had also addressed her by title. Her home was probably the one place she was safe, the Romulans didn't seem to be too interested in the outlying residents, in fact the only patrol that had entered the area had been pursuing Charles and his Marine section. She watched as her daughter's mate bodily lifted the stricken commando.

"Teraya-eingelsu ken-tor?" He asked with almost Vulcan flatness.

"We understand your language." One of the Vulcans stated flatly.

"Alright, inside, all of you. Sorry, T'Les, I just keep bringing folks in uninvited." Trip forced a meek smile despite the fact that the MAOA was still in command, assuming that doing so would help reassure his mother-in-law as it was a typical human gesture.

"I am eager to hear the reasoning behind them being here as well, Charles."

Rolston did a final sweep before backing into the courtyard and closing the gate. Weller and Tanner had divested the Vulcans of their Lirpas and pistols and they sat down on the floor of the main room. Salouis ran his medical scanner over them, comparing their signatures, before nodding calmly.

"They're Vulcan."

"What else would we be?" One of the commandos asked blandly.

Trip furrowed his brow, "You haven't seen any Romulans yet have you..." It was a statement more than a question.

"No, we have not."

"So you have no idea what a Romulan looks like?" The Commander cut eyes over to Salouis.

The Hospital Corpsman Second Class shrugged.

"Salouis, show 'em." The medic complied, showing them images of the Vulcanoid Romulans they had killed in action a few hours before, the shock was evident in spite of the Vulcan discipline.

"Now, my question is..." Trip paced the room slowly, rifle still in hand, "What the hell brought you out this far for T'Les?"

"We received news that MCS had engaged Romulan forces in this area near the professor's domicile." The commando Trip had taken down said, still rubbing his throat.

"Who did you hear that from?"

"The chancellor of the Science Academy informed us of the news and tasked us with retrieving Professor, T'Les." The same Vulcan replied, clearly the leader.

"V'Las ordered you to come see to my evacuation from the area?" T'Les inquired for clarification.

"That is correct. He received notification from military assistance command, Vulcan that a unit of marines had eradicated a Romulan patrol in the area."

T'Les seemed to visibly relax, "We have nothing to be suspicious of, Charles."

"Just one problem T'Les...we haven't been in contact with macvee since we hit the planet, the only beings who knew about those Romulans are either in this room, chewin' on them now, or part of the Romulan occupation command that's wonderin' where the hell their squad got off to." At this all of the Vulcans in the room lost their composure.


	11. Chapter 11

The dawn hours had been punctuated by the sounds of fierce fire fights. MAC-V was taking the fight to the Romulans for a change, it was a reversal, but all the reports coming in painted a rather dismal picture. Every turn they were running into more and more Romulan forces, for every platoon he deployed into the gap there was a company or more waiting for them. Shelby softly cursed the fact that two thirds of his brigade was scattered across Vulcan in platoon to company sized detachments, policing FOBs and star-strips. He took grim satisfaction in the fact that none of them had been hit in anything approaching force at this point. The Romulans had thrown a full battalion at Camp Hanneken but had been unable to budge Echo company from 2/3rd Marines and were beaten back with 58% casualties. Camp Burke was having a bit of a harder time, a brigade sized enemy action had been attacking consistently for five days now, they were holding their own but casualties were mounting. If he had all 2700 of his Marines at Camp Kelly he was relatively certain he could have swept Shi'kahr by now. As it was with only 900 available in the capital he was having to fight very cautiously. At 0320 a company sized action had pushed the elements of the Romulan invasion force from outside of the main gate of Camp Kelly allowing two companies to move outside of the MAC-V compound and begin actions against the enemy within the city proper.

Enterprise had been gone six days now meaning he should be able to expect reinforcements in maybe another ten. In retrospect it was alarmingly foolish to expect a single brigade could provide adequate military relief for an entire planet. There didn't seem to be any indication that there was anything resembling an actual Vulcan military defense force in place. Their ships had been run off almost immediately, leaving the planet exposed and now MAC-V was having to take the brunt of it. His Marines were never intended to hold the planet, their purpose had been to act as a force multiplier, instead the entire weight of what must be six Romulan divisions was bearing down on his boys' heads. Most of the local forces Vulcans had probably dropped their guns and run home...well...not run, likely walked deeming military resistance against such overwhelming odds to be illogical. Just another point of difference between the two people, humans hated to quit even when it was the most rational option. If he could get just a few hundred Vulcans into Camp Kelly he could strip two platoons each from Charlie and Weapons companies and get them out to support Alpha and Bravo. If he could get at least some of the Romulans out into the barrier hills, he could shell them to pieces, but it was going to be impossible to push enough of them with just two rifle companies and his mortars all being called danger close to either his marines or civic structures.

Arranged as it was on a major promontory in Shi'kahr, he could overlook Alpha and Bravo companies' AOs from Camp Kelly, the fighting was brutal, but at the very least it hadn't fully degenerated to building to building fights. When caught in a stand-up fight, a platoon could pretty effectively maim a company sized deployment of Romulan troops. Invariably it always took a few of them getting blown out of their boots before they fully grasped the fact that you didn't see a bullet coming like with a phaser or disrupter bolt. Sometimes the poor dumb bastards would do a massed charge into a platoon sized unit without cover. In the intervening space of a fifty to a hundred meters the amount of targets a single rifleman could engage was staggering, it was like a mad minute for hours at a time. By the end of the day he was certain the confirmed enemy casualty count would be in the thousands if they failed to wheel enough large unit actions in line to push back or overrun his marines.

"Sir." 1LT Gayle approached from behind.

Shelby turned, "What have you got for me, L T?"

"Sir, we've got the MARSOC section from Enterprise on the net, sir."

"Christ, you're kidding, they're still out there?" Shelby approached the commo tent they had set up on top of HHQ, the RTO immediately looked up to see the approaching Colonel and spoke back into the receiver.

"Barracuda, this is Black Flag, we have Arch Angel actual on line."

Shelby lifted the headset and put it on, he was immediately greeted by a thick twang, "Arch Angel, this is Barracuda actual, we are at grid reference zero seven two six five zero niner one, investigating possible enemy command level activity at Victor Sierra Alpha, over."

"About time you got up on the net, son."

"I apologize for that, Arch Angel, we were combat ineffective, did not want to tip our hand until we had room to maneuver. " The twangy voice replied.

"Please identify. It's alright, the Romulans either don't monitor these frequencies or don't understand out language." The Colonel reassured.

"This is Commander Charles Tucker from the Enterprise, Arch Angel. My section and I are heading for the Vulcan Science Academy, we have reason to believe there is a high value collaborator located in the Academy and possibly a way to gain control of the jamming devices in the planetary information network."

"Tucker, this is Colonel Shelby, what's your status, son?"

"Bingo casualties, we are three five klicks from the Science Academy approaching through the Forge. We have four indigenous personnel with us."

Shelby gawked, those MARSOC boys were crazy, but to have an Engineer leading them THROUGH the Forge was certifiably insane. Then again, jumping out of a perfectly good starship at thirty kilometers up was pretty damn crazy. His own jump wings were for standard airborne descent, no more than three kilometers up, but still as a Marine the idea of having that kind of training wasn't out of the ordinary. Why the hell did a fleet Engineer go through MARSOC? It was a 28 week hell that not even Shelby had attempted despite his status as an elite infantry officer.

"Son, we can get air trans out to you, crossing the forge is nuts."

"Little late for that, sir, we're zero five klicks from the edge."

From the twang it was entirely possible he was a Texan, if he had grown up around El Paso is was plausible that he wasn't wholly unaccustomed to the type of merciless sun and oppressive heat of a place like the Forge. It was a self-defending terrain feature, a large unit action was doomed to failure with heat casualties likely taking 62% or more of the force attempting to cross it. As if to reinforce the point...

"'Sides, sir, it's the one place we didn't have to dodge or reduce Romulan patrols."

"Guess that's a pretty good point, Barracuda. Be advised, there are a pair of Sierra India Delta three ones operating in the Science Academy AO. Friendlies will be dressed as indigenous personnel."

"Copy that, sir. Any further directives?"

"Not at this time, keep Black Flag advised."

"Roger, wilco, Barracuda out."

Shelby didn't want to have to bury these boys, there would be enough for him to bury after all was said and done. Current casualty numbers for all of MAC-V stood at 31 KIA, and 244 wounded. The Romulans were getting the worst of it with 362 confirmed killed in Shi'kahr and at least 1200 wounded, but they had the numbers and he didn't. He was partially certain that everything had started when Jim Reichauer had stayed behind with his section to act as a blocking force so that the High Command could escape the Romulan platoons that hard moved to flank. Up until two days ago he held out hope that Reichauer had escaped and that he and at least part of his section had gone to ground until they could creep back to Camp Kelly. Reality had finally dawned when a sniper had spotted the bodies from his observation tower and subsequently had his Lieutenant request permission to retrieve the bodies with his platoon from Bravo company. Denying the request had physically hurt Shelby, as he imagined the man he had considered a friend and his section decaying in an alleyway 96 trillion miles from home.

He had the letter he had written to Grace Reichauer sitting on his desk, he and Master Gunnery Sergeant Reichauer had come up together years and years ago. It was like he had lost his best friend and it hurt like hell, not that he would ever let it show. He didn't want to have to be responsible for losing anyone else, especially not the engineer who had apparently just knocked up his Vulcan girl. Would be nice if the kid could meet his or her daddy since he was, by all accounts, one the bravest sons of a bitch Shelby had ever heard of. He committed himself to living through this, bringing his men through, and doing whatever he could to make sure this Commander Tucker made it through so he could shake the man's hand when this was all over. And after all that, maybe, just maybe, he would tell Minister T'Pau what he had been meaning to say for the last three years after which he would resign his commission, move out to that little place he had been eyeing for years just outside Remsusala and live out the rest of his days; alone, just like he had begun his life outside that damn orphanage in Cincinnati 46 years ago.

* * *

><p>Talks had once again stalled as Minister Sukelt had insisted that a strict hierarchy be set in place for the counter-attack force and would not initially agree to the idea of MCS officers being responsible for the fate of Vulcan, or rather, that they not be permitted to make decisions in regards to the planet's fate. T'Pau was not privy to any of this, her role in the High Command was primarily cultural and while this made the delay frustratingly out of her purview, it did allow time for a conversation with Captain Archer. As the two slowly walked in front of MCS Headquarters, the scents of flowers and salt water tickled her nose. She found Archer to be agreeable company, if for no other reason than the fact he had once served as the Katric Ark for Surak's soul. She could never talk to Shelby about some things, she didn't understand why, but there were times when she could feel the tension between the two of them and it caused her to retreat from conversations that caused it to peak.<p>

"I have never seen and adequate explanation regarding the differences between augment categories, Captain Archer."

The human nodded, "It's actually pretty rudimentary. The first generation, system one Genetically Recombined Augmentees were the first ones produced to fight in the Eugenics War. They had improved stamina and strength. As the war went on, there were additional system specifications established. System two had improved reflexes and sensory capacity, system three had everything systems one and two had. System seven is basically a base-line human, coded for immunity to certain diseases and genetic disorders."

"And the generation system?"

"That just indicates the modification level. The retro-viruses themselves and the introduction protocols have been modified a number of times. I'm a fifth generation system four, for example."

"What is the system four?" She inquired.

"Basically just a system three with extra gene expression that codes for leadership qualities." Archer replied bluntly.

"And T'Pol of Vulcan's mate, what type of augmentee is he?"

Archer had been dreading this question. He wondered if his revelation now would change T'Pau's and the High Command's opinion of the union and perhaps reverse their ruling. It would be so horribly unfair without even getting to know the man, but what could he do? If he lied, he was relatively sure she would know, and if nothing else she might look it up on her own. Honesty was the only policy he could afford, if he lied it would color her response even more when the truth was known. He mentally apologized for what he was about to do to his friend and the woman he loved.

"Trip...Commander Tucker is an eighth generation system five augmentee." He let out a sigh.

"What is the system five?" She inquired without any suspicion coloring her voice.

"An apex predator." A voice said from behind.

The two spun to see Admiral Forrest approach, he was holding a briefcase, his face showing a mixture of relief and concern, it was impossible to determine which held primacy at the moment.

"I apologize Minister, I have to give something to Captain Archer. With your permission?"

The petite Vulcan nodded.

"Sorry, Jon, but we have to steal Erika." Forrest handed the captain a PADD with fleet orders.

"What? Why?" He was visibly shocked at this revelation from the admiral.

"Just read Jon, it'll all make sense." The younger human began reading through the details contained on the digital device, eyes darting quickly from left to right as he read the lines contained there-on.

"You were saying, Admiral?" The mousy Vulcan inquired.

"Hmmm? Oh, yes, the system five augmentees. The system five was created with the intention of creating special warfare pedigree soldiers without the years and years of training to hone the physical and mental aspects of their craft. System five was designed to produce enhanced strength, speed, stamina, physical fortitude, adaptability, and cunning. In short, they were created to be killing machines, a weapon that could be deployed against a threat and eliminate it with a minimum of death and destruction."

Archer had stopped reading and blanched, knowing the he had just heard Trip and T'Pol's marriage doomed. He was waiting in absolute dread for T'Pau to say something.

"Is that not ethically questionable?"

"Well, initially it was a volunteer only augmentation, but when some of them started having children of their own, the modified genes got passed on."

"And what of those offspring?" T'Pau kept her tone measured.

"At the end of the day an augmentee's mind is his or her own, the modifications don't change or create who a person is, it just gives them additional tools. In the case of the system fives they were wired to be more effectively lethal rather than naturally aggressive." Forrest explained.

"So if a series five human was to be an engineer or scientist?"

"It's what they wanted to do with their life, of course we usually don't undertake a series five protocol on someone who wants to enter such fields." Forrest supplied. "Series five is a strictly regulated military genetic recombination protocol, service is a prerequisite and it is almost never undertaken except in Marines with an appropriate training background."

The Vulcan woman contemplated a moment, "What would be circumstances for a member of the fleet forces to receive the protocol?"

Archer felt his heart make a hopeful flop, not sure whether the questioning was a good or bad thing, but suddenly sensing a ray of light at the end of a very, very dark, cold, dank, and likely filled with house-cat-sized-spiders, tunnel.

"Security personnel, landing team engineers, and of course genetics, families with long histories of service occasionally produce offspring that are effectively fully augmented at birth. I believe Enterprise's Commander Tucker was born at ninety three percent system five base-line, in that case it just made sense to upgrade his genetic code to the full one hundred percent augmentation."

T'Pau's placid expression seemed to soften just a bit further, her eyes seemingly focused on some indistinct point below and to the right of her eye level, then she bowed her head slightly, "Thank you, admiral, I found this conversation agreeably enlightening. If you will excuse me, I must return to my colleagues and attempt to force Minister Sukelt to behave in a more logical fashion. Peace and long life."

Forrest and Archer returned the split fingered salute, "Live long and prosper." they intoned.

They watched as the petite Vulcan wrapped in the almost comically large robes walked away at a brisk pace, but there was something else in the walk, it was like she was walking fast because of some imperative, her movements were almost like an idle saunter. She was walking like a Vulcan that was...happy? Both men immediately put the idea out of their mind, Vulcans did not get "happy" just like they did not joke, smile, or get jealous.

"So what was that about?" Forrest finally asked.

"Do you remember a forwarded inquiry about MCS inclusion in a Vulcan Cultural ritual about five months ago?"

"Yeah, so?" Forrest didn't make the connection.

"I'll explain after I get the straight dope on this deal with Hernandez, why are you taking her off my boat? She's probably the best first officer in MCS." Archer scowled.

"It's temporary Jon, The Columbia is putting in tomorrow for retrofits but the Potemkin is still a week out on repair and retrofit, we can attach Columbia to the task force now, but we need someone with experience. Your crew is the only one we have who has fought the Romulans, we need someone who can bring that experience to the table on Columbia." Forrest elucidated calmly.

"What other cruisers are we looking at?"

"Revenge, Huron, and Liberty, each of you will head a four destroyer, one frigate flotilla, the double deltas have all been upgraded even if Columbia and Liberty haven't. And based on what we saw above Vulcan, Enterprise was more than a match for any five Romulan ships." Forrest allowed a hint of mirth on his face.

"Entirely my crew, sir. My people are the best...including commander Hernandez."

"Jon, we're not taking her away, she'll get transferred back." Forrest paused, "You still got a thing for her?"

Both men turned to look out at the bay. Small craft gently moved along the choppy waters under the Golden Gate Bridge a mild breeze playing off the water licked at them both.

"Guess I always have..." Archer admitted with a mildly defeated tone.

"Think its mutual?"

"Not my place to say."

Forrest cut eyes over to his protégé, "You two certainly keep yourselves well behaved unless you're slipping off into the ready room to make out when people think you're discussing command issues."

"I found out that the walls are thin enough for sound to carry through a nine days ago when my science officer heard about what happened to Vulcan and collapsed." Archer noted, "so it's not like we could have kept it hidden if anything was going on between me and Erika, anyway."

"Well, if she did get made captain of Columbia...if she's out of your chain of command it's not fraternization. "

"I'd rather have a good first officer than a girlfriend." Archer snapped.

Forrest held up defensive hands, "Alright alright, I get the hint. So what was this about some Vulcan cultural thing?"

"You remember it?"

"Yeah, something about a duel between one of our officers and a Vulcan over some ritual or something. We approved it after High Command said it wasn't directly adverse, why?" Forrest shrugged.

"My chief Engineer, Trip Tucker, was the one who fought the duel. It was part of a marriage ritual. My science officer and cultural attaché, sub-commander T'Pol, named him as her champion so she could marry him instead of the man she was betrothed too." Archer grimaced.

"Well, those Southern boys were always chivalrous." Forrest half-grinned. "The marriage was annulled later, correct?"

"She's a little more than a week pregnant with his baby." Archer decided to do the mercy of dropping the bomb rather than leaving it floating over the conversation like a sword of Damocles.

"Wow..." Forrest couldn't manage another word for a solid minute.

* * *

><p>The officer's mess was much like the officer's quarters, cramped, sparse, and utilitarian, still it offered a measure of privacy not accorded to those in the mess-hall which was an all purpose room for eating, training, ship-wide assemblies, refugee billeting, and, if necessary, emergency triagecasualty collection. T'Pol usually ate with Commander Tucker or alone, but of late Sato, Reed, and Mayweather had taken it upon themselves to dine with the sub-commander to keep the constant string of condolences over what was happening to Vulcan from junior personnel at bay.

Hoshi Sato eyed T'Pol carefully before speaking. What she had witnessed was hard for her to reconcile, impossible to reconcile, she could say with all honesty she probably understood more about Vulcan culture than any other human on the ship and what the Sub-commander had just done was a repudiation of tens of hundreds of years of culture. She had just witnessed the Vulcan spear a shaved-thin strip of beef from the salad, stick it in her mouth and was even now chewing it was an expression of intense dissatisfaction.

"T'Pol, why did you just eat a piece of meat?"

The Vulcan's eyes seemed to be almost pleading, begging for some respite from what she clearly found to be a horribly distasteful act. This prompted the communications officer to stand, turning towards the door with a deadly serious expression on her face. "I'm going to talk to chef, if this is his idea of a joke it isn't funny, it's in really poor taste."

"Poor taste..." Reed let out a halting faux-chuckle, "Punny..."

Hoshi speared him with a withering glare, and the Englishman lowered his head with barely contained amusement painting his face, impaling a cooked carrot with his fork and shoving it into his mouth to prevent his jaw from doing anything but chewing. The Ship's chef was a concession made owing to the diplomacy role that was an aspect of _Enterprise's_ mandate as warship and mobile ambassadorial mission. Meals were prepared by the ship's logistical and custodial staff of enlisted personnel with the Chef providing oversight, the professional's role was primarily involved in the preparation of meals for dignitaries, foreign nationals, and various ambassadorial personnel. As a foreign national and cultural attaché, T'Pol's meals were often prepared directly by the Chef and it had become understood by the crew that their Vulcan comrade was accorded the special privilege.

"Miss Sato, please wait, this is not as it appears." T'Pol stated after quickly and demurely wiping her lips with her napkin.

Hoshi sat back down, "Sub-commander, it was my understanding that you were a strict vegetarian."

T'Pol sighed, how to put this? She spoke low and in a measured tone, trying to seem like she was having a perfectly normal conversation to avoid inviting unwarranted attention, "The...child, has nutritional requirements that cannot be met through the standard Vulcan diet. Fifty percent of the child's genetic structure is human after all, ergo I would be remiss if I did not make concessions for the needs of the child's human half."

Hoshi shrugged, "There are human women that are vegans."

Reed sneered, "And have you seen what that can do to the long term health of an adult much less a baby?"

Hoshi leaned back thoughtfully, "That's true, when chemical modification of livestock was banned on Earth it did get rid of a lot of the supposed health issues associated with meat and dairy."

"As it is, Doctor Phlox has advised me that consumption of a small portion of animal protein daily will be beneficial for the child." T'Pol commented calmly, stabbing her fork into her salad again.

"How is it working for you?" Reed inquired.

"I have overcome the initial nausea that ingesting meat initially provoked and while I still find the concept offensive, I am acclimating to it." The sub-commander supplied with composed dignity.

"No physical side effects?" Hoshi rested her elbow on the table, settling her chin in her elevated palm.

"As of one thousand years ago the consumption of meat was still relatively common in limited quantities on Vulcan. Certain breeds of mollusk are still consumed regularly. Animal flesh has only been excluded from the Vulcan diet for roughly seventeen generations, ergo our bodies can still adapt to its presence."

"And personally, what do you think?" Reed asked, it was a definitively human question.

"The smell and taste are not wholly disagreeable." T'Pol conceded reluctantly. "However I find it mentally disagreeable to consider the fact that a life-form is killed in order to acquire the substance."

Reed, as devoutly omnivorous as possible, leaned back from the table. "You have to remember, T'Pol that most of these life-forms in question are, in effect, artificial."

T'Pol and Hoshi both frowned. Sato liked a piece of meat as much as the next girl, as a matter of fact her favorite dish was probably maeun dwaeji galbi, she had first grown to love the dish during a language seminar in Seoul. But regardless, Reed's contention was strange and most assuredly a misrepresentation.

"Oh come on, Malcolm...artificial?"

"Cattle, Chickens, and Pigs are all carefully bred and manipulated analogues of animals that are naturally occurring. You will never see a cow or chicken in the wild that wasn't released there, and they usually can't compete against their hardier and less specialized natural analogues. You never see herds of cape buffalo or anoa or gaur like you see herds of cattle. These species were manipulated for our use and, all things considered, they have it pretty good until which point...well you get the idea." Reed expounded, "With the laws that were pushed to ban chemical treatment and humane husbandry practices, they live comfortable lives without concern for predators, shelter, or where they will get their next meal from, right up until it's time for the slaughter. Consider that and the fact that fishing has been regulated to the point that un-farmed fish is a luxury item and you can see that they are an utterly essential component of human existence, one that we have effectively created."

Hoshi laughed, "Congratulations, Malcolm, you've just won your first argument."

"It's not the first one I've won." The tactical officer grumbled, spearing another carrot.

"So, T'Pol, have you thought of names yet?" Hoshi gleamed with excitement as she segued into 'girl talk' with the generally uptight Vulcan.

"We have given passing thought to a name should it turn out that the child is female."

She had offered the information up innocently, then almost felt the sudden tension like a change in atmospheric pressure. She looked up as both Hoshi and Malcolm gave her a look that left her feeling horribly self conscious. Their eyes were analytical, inquiring, as if somehow reading some piece of information written onto her body. She realized with sudden clarity that she had said entirely too much, given away the fact that the pregnancy was a result they had at least calculated and planned at some juncture.

"So how long have you two been planning on having a baby?" Reed asked in a coolly investigative tone.

"There was no plan," T'Pol countered in an uncomfortable manner, "we simply had discussed the potential of children and names."

"Well...?" Hoshi prompted.

"Well, what?" T'Pol countered.

"The name?"

"We had decided that if our first born is female we will name her Elizabeth in honor of Commander Tucker's sister."

Hoshi smiled softly, it was a beautiful gesture, the type that Trip never would have thought of or deigned to suggest, this was clearly T'Pol's idea. It had honestly surprised many of the crew how calm Tucker had presented himself after the death of his sister. The odds that she would have been one of the 62,000 that had been caught in the Xindi attack was staggeringly low, yet she had been one of the sad number that were killed in the two and one tenth seconds the weapon had fired before being destroyed. He had shoved his sadness down and moved on with resolve and determination that belied how much he had loved his forever-little sister. There were stories among those in engineering who had witnessed it that he had vented his hatred on the Reptilian Xindi during one of the boarding actions. The stories varied wildly in content and details save for one wherein he had almost decapitated a Reptilian while in the process of breaking his neck in a hand to hand fight. Even though the carpeting had been removed and the wall panels were new, Hoshi could swear she could still see the blood stain where it happened to this day, just outside engineering.

"What if it's a boy?" Reed interjected.

"I suppose tradition would dictate he be Charles Tucker the fourth." T'Pol commented with arched brows.

"I really don't think Trip would make that demand. Besides, quad doesn't roll off the tongue quite the same way as Trip." Reed commented.

"What was your father's name?" Hoshi inquired.

T'Pol set down her fork, eyes fixing indistinctly forward, "Solan."

Reed sat back, looked at Hoshi, then back to T'Pol eyes widened, "That's actually...really nice."

Sato nodded, similarly taken by the way it had danced from T'Pol's mouth, it was pretty, regal, exotic, and it was fitting; honoring those the two of them had lost in the names of their children. "Yeah, it is, Solan is a beautiful name T'Pol."

The three sat silently for a moment, contemplating the name that seemed to have such a pronounced effect. Her father had been much like her, emotional, passionate, and always struggling to be a "proper" Vulcan. As a child she had always overlooked it, as a teen she had ignored it, and as an adult she had abhorred his soft emotionality that always churned and crashed underneath a layer of faux-Vulcan propriety. Now, in the fullness of time she could remember things she had overlooked earlier in her life, the quietly perfect fire of her mother and father's mate bond. The way a soft touch from father to mother as he quickly and covertly invaded her personal space would light up her eyes. Her mother was one of the most logical Vulcans she had ever known; strict, precise, almost cold. But her father had always softened her, made her less severe. She had always felt it through the parent-child bond with her father that he had adored and loved her, his child and light of his life. It wasn't until early adolescence that she learned a Vulcan was not supposed to feel such strong emotions. The purpose of the logic, of Kolinahr, of all their cultural traditions was to smother emotions and, if possible, be rid of them entirely.

She now, after losing so much, understood the beauty of those stormy emotions, the beauty in having someone to share them with. Just as her mother had been her father's rock of stability, so to was Trip hers. She was certain she had battened her rock more than her father had ever tried upon her mother, but in some ways humans were stronger for accepting their emotions. Her mother never remarried, she could have with ease, but still she persisted for fifteen years to live alone in that house with no children to support or see to her well being and no husband. It had to mean she had loved him intensely, and she found herself needing to understand why they had never had more children.

"Solan Tucker." T'Pol said to herself.

The communications officer and armory chief gave each other amused looks. T'Pol cocked her head in an inquisitive way.

"The 'Tucker' ruins it." Hoshi said in marked amusement.

T'Pol demurred, sending her fork hunting through her salad, "I am certain he would be every bit his father's son."

"Tumultuous, argumentative, emotive, and a big hit with the girls." Reed smirked, prompting Hoshi to give him a playful slug to the arm.

T'Pol's eyes widened as Reed put what she had said almost painfully into perspective.

* * *

><p>She realized it was an ambush far too late, the doors to the quarters closed as two other ministers stepped to block her exit and before her T'Pau stood with an expression that seemed almost, apologetic. She had been drawn to the Minister's temporary quarters, her own usual quarters, without a second thought, never with a concern that perhaps the resolution that the High Command had offered about her marriage to Trip was anything but genuine. She felt a growing knot of terror forming in her stomach, this was not to be a discussion of a logical nature. As T'Pau took the first slow steps forward she had already pulled back the right sleeve of her robe and was raising her hand with thumb, index finger, and middle finger raised in the position of the meld.<p>

"No..." T'Pol shook her head, "I do not consent to this."

"There is no choice, T'Pol, daughter of T'Les, daughter of Solan." T'Pau said softly in Vulcan, "You have not bonded to a mate, but to a weapon."

"No, Trip is not a weapon...he is a person." The emotions were already boiling to the surface, evidenced by the halting staccato of her voice.

"Your mind will bear out the truth of it one way or another. Whatever else it may be, the child in you is still half Vulcan, we ask that you do not resist to avoid any potential harm to it."

"What happened to your speeches about 'rough men' willing to kill on your behalf?" T'Pol hissed.

"Your mate is not a man, he is a device."

"That assertion is illogical."

"Are you aware of what a system five augmentee is, T'Pol?" The minister asked as she drew closer.

"He is a human; he feels, he thinks, he has plans, aspirations, and goals. He is no different from any other member of his species."

"System five was designed to produce killers, no more, no less. They are apex predators, as Admiral Forrest put it, and one does not mate to a predator." T'Pau was within a meter, her hand came up to T'Pol's face to perform the meld. Hands clapped down on T'Pol's shoulders and her upper arms, holding her still as she instinctively tried to escape the perceived threat.

"Why are you doing this?" T'Pol demanded, the loss of control she was beginning to show on her face, painted as a mask of indignation, confusion, and fear.

"To determine if what you carry is Vulcan or a weapon."

"It is too early to determine that!" She protested.

"Your mind will bear the truth." T'pau's hand hovered centimeters from T'Pol's face. "Do not attempt to resist, it places not only the offspring at risk but yourself as well."

"What you wish to see is private." T'Pol struggled against the arms restraining her instinctively.

"I am aware of that, and I apologize for the offense I am about to undertake, but if your offspring wishes a place in Vulcan society, I must determine if the father is worthy of being determined such." Her fingers took their position on the left side of T'Pol's face, finding the neural pathways that would allow her to breach the elder Vulcan's mind.

This was as much for herself as for the sake of Vulcan law and cultural observance. T'Pau had still been apprehensive in regards to recognizing the marriage, her speech had only served to offer a logically dissenting opinion where all others had remained silent. She was no more sure whether this union upheld the traditional requirements of Vulcan tradition or not than anyone except perhaps the two in the union itself. But there was a curiosity, a desire to know what life with a human could have been, what it would be like to endure all those emotions and passions without the cold weight of Kolinahr to stifle it. Did T'Pol live in bliss or torture, or was one just a form of the other? Humans referred to a state called ecstasy, a moment of transcendence from the normal mental state. According to their cultural tradition ecstasy could be brought about by either pleasure or pain, what then did T'Pol experience?

"My mind to you mind...my thoughts to your thoughts."

T'Pol fixed her with a defiant glare, her struggling had ceased and her resistance to the meld held like a final disclaimer before allowing full access. There was anger in her eyes, indignant, righteous fury, the fact that she deigned to enjoy her love of her husband behind closed doors was tacit expression of the desire for privacy. This was more of an intrusion than if they had just forced the door and watched them share their moments of intimacy. T'Pau would see everything as she saw it, feel everything as she felt it, she wasn't entirely sure that experiencing those moments locked away in her mind again wouldn't leave her a gasping ruin again, what then would it do to a woman who had mastered the Kolnahr and never experienced passions and emotions of this strength?

"You will not be prepared." T'Pol let the words slip like a death sentence and lowered her last vestige of resistance.

"Our minds are merging, our minds are one..."

It wasn't even a moment before T'Pau gasped, hand shaking, arm quivering, eyes wide, mouth agape in shock as T'Pol let her have it, all of it. The unvarnished reality of what her mate was, what it meant to be bonded to him, what it meant to _love_ him and be loved by him. With any luck, T'Pol had ruined T'Pau completely, and in her primitively emotional Vulcan mind, it seemed like a just revenge.

* * *

><p>Lo'wahl watched his youngest son with interest and pride, he was different in many way from most Klingon youths his age. When most Klingon boys from the age twelve and up were struggling to seem like men, his dotage for his youngest boy was centered in the fact that he was definitively un-Klingon in appearance and behavior. He was a Grint Hound among Targs; intelligent, lithe, skilled, but also frailer in appearance. These other adolescents wore each hair that grew on their face as a bad of honor, they wrapped themselves in thick jackets to increase the appearance of their size and strength and grunted loud to mimic the sounds of their elders. Lo'wahl had, himself, seen the way his boy scrupulously shaved each hair from his unblemished skin every morning, the way he dressed himself in clothes that masked his corded sinew as gangly awkwardness.<p>

His youngest son was heavily rated as the absolute under-dog of the 14 to 17 bracket of the Bat'leth competition, a fact that Lo'wahl was offended by as he saw the pedigree in his boy, but at the same time it almost amused him as he knew his youngest son would continue to upset the expectations as he had up until this the semi-final round. His eldest son, Kuhrd had already won champion standing in the 25 to 30 bracket, as had his third son Goral in the 21 to 24. His second son, Dhe'bekt, had placed fourth in the same bracket as his older brother, and the fourth son, L'awl had opted not to compete, instead focusing his attention on improving his skill with the d'k tahg at which he was already widely regarded a master. He had told his sons from the time they were old enough to understand that they should always strive to honor themselves first, to find the pride in what they did, to seek self-edification. His pride in his sons was tied to their efforts to elevate themselves for their own sake, never for his.

When Kuhrd was ten, he had taken his son to Mount Kri'stak and told his eldest boy that whatever he desired to be in life that he, his father, would support him. Be it doctor, scientist, engineer, or scholar of the law, he would do whatever was in his power to help him. Kuhrd had entered a defiant stage of his life and asked what would his father do should he decide to become an artist? Lo'wahl laughed and said that an artist would make a fine addition to the family, and that he would adorn his house with his works, and all Qo'nos would know of the glory of Kuhrd the artist. When his son realized that the father placed no pre-condition on him he answered, "No, father, I will become a warrior as you so that I may allow my children the same deference." Over the years he had completed the ritual with each of his sons and each seemed to want nothing more than to follow the example of their father, and in this he found great pride.

As a young man, he had fought hard to elevate himself above his birthright, using skill and determination to eventually earn his own ship and glory for himself. It was this martial pedigree that had turned Lo'wahl into a respected and feared political factor in the empire from his humble beginnings as the son of a quartermaster clerk. He fought his way up to junior officer ranks by dint of determination and skill without political ties or family to rely on. He married for love, not position and his wife had produced him five sons and a daughter in their 31 years, so far, of marriage. She's was his opposite number in many ways; he stood 1.97 meters she stood 1.6, he was muscular and lean she was ample in the hips, buttocks, and bosom and pleasingly soft. He usually appeared harsh and combative while she had a perpetually squinting visage and soft face that made it appear she was always smiling. Of all his children they all favored the family lines of either he or their mother, but his youngest, he was cut from a different cloth, seemingly a child of long hidden ancestry with skin far to pale to seem Klingon and hair that ranged in the lightest shade of brown. To an outsider the boy would seem weak, but Lo'wahl knew of his son's endless hours of isometric exercises and the hours and hours on end he spent swinging and manipulating the bat'leth during his studies with the family tutor. He was stronger than most of the youths in his bracket, perhaps many of the 18 year olds as well, but it was lean athletic muscle, the type that he could exert effortlessly for hours without tiring and to the bulk obsessed youths here, he would seem weak.

"His style has always been unconventional, father." Kuhrd spoke, catching Lo'wahl's attention and he turned to see his champion eldest with his mate with newborn child cradled in her arms standing a few meters behind.

"Krapt has always made his own way, my son."

"Like all of us, father. Having him fight in this bracket hardly seems fair, they're like children to him."

Goral approached with Dhe'bekt, the younger champion speaking up, "His stance is a Mok'bara stance, and he holds the blade away like one would a Gin'tak."

Lo'wahl nodded, "And his opponent still believes it will be a battle of pure strength."

Kuhrd shook his head making a derisive sound, "The fool has already lost, Krapt will take him in three blows."

Dhe'bekt remained silent, he was facing the potential of all three other brothers who competed in the Bat'leth Competition walking away with champion standing. He knew he would never be able to defeat Kurhd, but to not even place in the top three left him feeling ashamed.

"Dhe'bekt! My son, what do you say of Krapt's tactics? What blows shall he use today?"

The second son stepped forward, secretly thankful that his father had deigned to include him despite his failure to make it past fourth place. He knew that his father placed no expectation on him, but to fail was...unforgiveable, at least in his eyes. "Based on his stance, he will sweep the knees and use an overhead cross cut across the left shoulder." Dhe'bekt narrowed his smoky brown eyes, almost envisioning the fight as was his way, he was the strategist, "The boy has insulted our brother's heritage, so Krapt will seek to shame him, he will step away before dealing what will be considered the winning blow, letting the other boy rise. He will seek to hurt our brother and will charge recklessly, but Krapt will lock the blade and deflect it away, then a hilt strike to the other boy's face and a lateral neck blow will end the fight."

Krapt waited on his side of the ring, the heft of the bat'leth resting in his arm felt crude, it was dull, heavy, unrefined. He kept his personal weapon sharpened to a razor's edge, a fact his older brothers often scolded him for. If it was that sharp, it would not be as effective for blocking, a heavy blow would take large gouges out of the edge and reduce effectiveness. Still, his method was always to land his blows with finesse and precision, what need was there to block when you could land a killing stroke before the opponent could effectively attack? He longed for his weapon to deal with the targ in front of him.

"Did you hear me? I said your father is a pathetic bastard son of a garbage scow cook, and your mother is a whore that was too unclean for anything but a low-born bastard." The youth sneered at Krapt, spinning his bat'leth in lazy circles.

Krapt stood stolidly, the sparring blade cradled in the curve of his right arm back and away from his body, his left arm low and forward along with his extended left leg. This was nothing like a traditional or accepted Bat'leth fighting stance, but he found the accepted methods of fighting to be far too pedestrian and limited. If there was one thing he learned from his father and his four older brothers it was this; be unconventional, defy the expected, and forge your own destiny. His opponent was 17, three years his senior, but to Krapt he was a child, a boy who didn't understand the true nature of strength or skill. The fact he had dared, _dared_, to insult his mother...his father...it was unforgivable, and he would punish him appropriately even as he stared at him with utter apathy he was seething inside.

When his opponent lunged it was clumsy, no finesse, no precision, it was an animal's attack. The bat'leth danced in his hand, flipping out and away, a long and curved wing like his eldest brother's _Bird of Prey_, the ship gifted to him by their father when he proved himself as both warrior and commander. He struck behind the rutting targ's knees and dropped him to the mat, spinning past like a leaf carried on a gust of wind he brought the practice-blade over his head and down with both hands, a cross blow on his left shoulder, hard enough that he could feel the sickening smack of metal against flesh up his own arms and down his spine. In these moments, all was lost to the art of the blade, nothing seemed quite as real, just passing stimuli as he focused solely on the blow, the winning struck, the skillful cut.

A shout of protest went up. Illegal blow, illegal blow. An argument, between the sword master and the targ's father. His own father's eyes, the eyes of his brother looking on, approving, nodding. He would win; for his father, four his four brothers, for his little niece only a few days old, his eldest brother's pretty wife, for his mother waiting at home, and his older sister to whom he would relate his feats today. The sword master decides in his favor, the match continues. The foul mouthed beast is spewing his filth again, but Krapt pays no heed, he is just a stepping stone to victory, to honor for his father, his brothers, his mother and his new niece, honor for himself. The charge again, the fool doesn't show a modicum of finesse, it is all brute energy, so easily deflected. Locking the blade away with the horn of his bat'leth, then the step inside his guard, locking the brute's leg with his own. Instinctively he brings the blade back up, feeling the leather wrapped hilt smash into the offending mouth, then, pirouetting away, both hands swinging the faux-blade across the neck, feeling the moment of resistance, the reverberation through the hilt, into his arms, and stopping at the shoulders. The satisfying thud as the unconscious body hits the floor, and the roars of the spectators. All of which pales to the satisfaction he sees in his father's eyes.


	12. Chapter 12

T'Pol was still softly shaking, her body quivering out of confusion as how to react to the ordeal. Energy was available, energy to help her reach some manner of catharsis as to what had occurred but without any form of outlet or means with which to expend the energy. She felt rage; rage at the invasion of privacy, rage at the helplessness she experienced against the intrusion, rage at the tacit threat towards her child, rage at the implications made about her mate. She felt love; an intense love now for the formless, motionless, nigh-soulless ball of tissue growing in her and love for the mate that had put it there. She also felt a strange sense of disquieting pleasure at the mental anguish the power of the passions she experienced had caused in the Kolinahr tempered pedagogue who deemed her less Vulcan for mating with what she, T'Pau, had in her oligarch's way, considered to be a being of lesser accord. This was reciprocity, sweeter than revenge because it required nothing more from T'Pol to destroy her foe. The recollection of the Kal-if-fee served excellently to illustrate the fact that her mate was not a killing machine, but the minister had seen fit to dig deeper, and it was the memory she uncovered that brought T'Pol comfort and discomfort in equal measure. She dared tread into secret places to see things that were only for adun and ko-telsu to experience and remember.

The indignity T'Pau had bore as they released muted whimpers in perfect chorus, the shame she must have felt when they both cried out his name, reliving the memory of the wedding night and the traditional codification of the mate bond, it was a fitting tribute to pay. Still, to have so private a memory, the most distinctive in her recollection paraded before this wisp of a girl enraged and upset her. T'Pol had to accept it for a victory despite the anger, she savored for a moment the sweetness of the little triumph, smiling to herself past eyes that burned with unshed tears and she hugged herself close on the bunk in which she could still smell him. His scent and the still fresh memories awoke the instinctive Vulcan in here, and she felt a strong need to establish safety and security for herself and her offspring until her adun would return from war. Some instinctively Vulcan part of her now perceived imminent threats to her child-to-be and she wanted to preemptively attack those threats. It was the fullest measure of her willpower that kept her from, even know, seeking and destroying T'Pau as a possible source of danger. She forced herself back into the memories, drawing from them the emotions to flood away the instinctive feelings with an equally logic-shattering stimulus.

The first place T'Pau had sought was the ritual of the Kal-if-fee, the ancient rite by which the human had won T'Pol in the first place. It was here, the minister was certain, that she would find proof of his unsuitability. Through the mind-meld T'Pol felt the traces of apprehension in the younger Vulcan's mind. If this man was a killing machine, why then had Koss been spared in spite of the ritual demand of death? Blood must be spilled to set right the balance, yet she knew for a fact that Koss was alive and physically intact. T'Pol let the memory pour forth as the definitive moment of pride in her mate when he had bested his foe and been merciful, not just out of the demand of MCS, but also because mercy was in his nature. Living it again, T'Pol felt her blood heat and her heart race as she remembered the hints of fear she felt as her chosen faced her betrothed, the sensation of thrill when he shrugged off the tunic of the traditional Vulcan fighting clothes revealing his muscled and scarred body, the heady scent of calmly muted aggression he had given off, and the steely resolve in his voice as he intoned his claim to T'Pol in the traditional Vulcan heavily accented with a twang that was present regardless of what language he spoke. "Afsakau nash-veh oyut-kali-tor, u'xoa T'Pol adun."

He had used his body as a challenge, marked as it was by the stressors of his dual crafts as man of science and war fighter, as if defying Koss to dare stand against him in battle. She would never know if it had actually worked of whether Koss had actually been in the early stages of Pon Farr because he attacked immediately. The Vulcan male had charged with utter abandon swinging the lirpa in a wide overhead arc only to be forced to dodge away as the augmentee swung his in a wide lateral arc using a single hand to grip the weapon just before the weighted bludgeon on the end of the haft. This had effectively given the human a two and a half meter reach, and utilizing this and his superior strength he kept Koss adequately corralled for quite some time. Each time the Vulcan would attempt to advance, Trip had thrust or swung the weapon with surprising speed, the sound of the blade humming through the air with each thrust or swing testament enough to the strength behind each move. Reliving the memories they seemed to pass with relative time-proportionate speed, but when the duel had occurred the minutes seemed to drag on like hours as her heart caught and fluttered in fear for her beloved. Her own memory of the battle triggered another cascade of memories; things he said and did before the battle. "I used to play Robin Hood a lot as a kid."

She had been confused, "I do not understand how that will benefit you in the Kal-if-fee."

"Did you ever read Robin Hood? The part where he's gonna cross the stream in Sherwood, and Lil' John is standin' blockin' the path with the quarter-staff. Me and the neighborhood kids used ta' do the same thing. I got pretty damn good at it." And his reassuring smile as he tried to assuage her fears.

So crass, so brash, so decidedly human; it was what she loved and hated about him, his insufferability was both a delight and a curse. The thought that he could marginalize a battle to the death as a game had at first shocked and outraged her, his orders had been to defeat Koss without seriously injuring him, her betrothed, on the other hand, had no such restriction and would almost certainly kill her human lover to ensure she would never stray back to him. "This is not a game, Koss will kill you if he gets the opportunity. Why can't you take anything seriously?" She pounded on his chest as the raw emotionality had ripped over her, voice quivering and halting as was the Vulcan way when strong feelings began to shear through their reserve. "I can't live without you, I would rather kill myself than go on without you."

Memory flooded back of the fiery intensity she felt as his crooked index finger lifted her chin and he stared into her eyes, a strange mixture of intensity and softness in his face, "Hey, look at me...don't ever say that. Don't you ever say that. I'm not going to lose to Koss but you have to promise me that no matter what happens to me you'll never do anything like that."

She whimpered feebly, digging her fingers into the shirt where her fists had pounded moments before, she tried to lower her head only to have her chin lifted back to his eyes and his voice, seeming to shake her to her very katra despite the muted volume, "Promise me, T'Pol."

She had promised, promised her beloved that she would endure for his sake no matter what happened, no matter what the future may hold. And what the future had held was his utter domination of the death match, not just physically, but mentally as well. He had been toying with Koss, building the Vulcan's frustration to the point where he would make a mistake he could exploit. Koss' mistake had taken the form of a bull-rush, his lirpa held out in attempt to ward off the wide sweeping blows. It was to be the opening Trip had been looking for, he hooked the back end of his lirpa's blade against the haft of Koss' and stepping in and to the side he twisted the weapon to the side and away from the Vulcan's hands, sending both weapons careening away. To his credit Koss had attempted to lock onto Tucker with a Suus Mahna grapple only to take a knife-hand chop across the throat and a heel crashing into the inside of his left knee. When he fell, Trip immediately scrambled to mount leading Koss to futilely attempt to grab the human's throat. This, of course, just prompted Commander Tucker to put the Vulcan in an arm bar, quickly dislocating the arm. Koss continued to scramble, trying to gain footing to reverse the hold the human had him despite the fact that Tucker was easily dictating the pace of the battle, legs locked over the shoulders of the trapped Koss and he started raining a series of blows on the Vulcan's face. Six punches landed, each producing a sick slapping sound as knuckled pounded into the meat of his jaw, nose, and cheeks. Before he could land a seventh, Trip Koss had been rendered unconscious and her mate, her love, her infuriating human rose to beg the indulgence of the priests for the sake of his opponent. He asked T'Les to translate his words into Vulcan exactly as he spoke them, a thing her mother assented to immediately, which had led T'Pol to believe that she already knew her mate-to-be never had intended to kill his opponent despite the fact that she had not informed her mother of such.

"Honored elders, I ask that I be permitted to extend mercy to Koss. There is no logic in depriving Vulcan of his talent and nothing is gained in his death."

The old Vulcan men nodded solemnly, praising his wisdom, restraint, and the admirable application of logic in a rite that was the ancestral anathema there-of. And with that, T'Pol had emerged victorious, victorious in that she had chosen her mate for herself, the mate she loved and desired. T'Pau pushed still further, though and past the ceremony to the single definitive moment that would determine the status of her adun as man or machine, mate or weapon. To the single most intimate moments of that day, the final and ultimate culmination of the kal-if-farr. Trip did not understand the disciplines of Vulcan meditation, so the traditional seclusion for meditation and bonding had been irrelevant and unnecessary. Still, the memory of the words of the Elders shared between the two had been as much of a shock to T'Pau when she heard it as it had been to T'Pol when she realized they had already known a bond existed between the two. They spoke in the ancient forms, florid and beautiful as Vulcans so in tune with mind and spirit could be.

"This man was thy mate, already, bonded to thee as was the ancient way of male and female. Thine is the bond of love, and thou hast bonded true to him, so thou must cleave only to him from hence on. Thou takes a difficult path, child, and verily it shall challenge thee, but takest thou strength in his strength for it shall preserve thee now as it hast in times past. Peace and Long life to thee, may they house prosper, may thy seed be plentiful, and may thee be forever prosperous, husband and wife."

This had led to the memory that had served to undo them both, the recollection of the night they took to the bed as husband and wife, consummating the marriage bond in the manner of the ancient beings to whom passion was as common as logic was to post-Surak Vulcans. Reliving the memories of the tenderness in his touch the beautiful words he whispered into her ear, as he did what no Vulcan ever could, he made love to her. Instinctively she had always known what to expect from the physical act of mating, it was universal. She had experienced his body before, in the expanse they had enjoyed the rudimentary pleasure of the naked coupling, his body thrust into hers leaving each mind to contemplate on its own, independent from one another and all their emotions held entirely to themselves except where-as they allowed them to be recognizable. But this would be the first time their minds merged with their bodies. Sentient species would instinctively seek each other out to mate and would manage to do so without instruction or information on what was necessary to do so. Still, what he had done, it was beyond her expectations...a departure for what she felt certain would happen. Emotions were like sensations, passions like rage and lust burning hot, his affection on the other hand was like a silken layer, a curtain drawn smoothly across her katra, soothing and coaxing, building towards shattering rapture. T'Pau knew nothing of feelings like this, the beauty in these strange emotions that had been so long divorced from Vulcan culture and existed only within the most profound depth of the mate bond and, then, only rarely. T'Pau's Kolinahr had not prepared her for anything like this, and where she expected to find Ket-cheleb she found Valdena. As sure as if they had been her own fingers, T'Pau had felt the smoothness of his skin, the texture of his flaxen hair, the heat of his lips ministering softly and affectionately to her/T'Pol's mouth, neck, ears, and shoulders. She had been almost undone as she experienced the feeling of the wantonly accepted penetration, the heat of the intruder entering into a body so perfectly willing and ready for it, the conjoined sensation of his pulse and hers beating a muted and desperate rhythm in the most intimate of anatomical acts. And the coup de grâce; the words he had spoken on ragged breaths, the affirmation that he was a being and not a device, "I love you, T'Pol...I love you so much."

T'Pau broke the meld just before the riving of climax; T'Pol had been left reliving it all in perfect memory of sensation, nerves fired as if it was actually happening, leaving her to shamelessly collapse to the carpeted deck, shaking with muscles spasms in her legs as her body did as it believe it should. T'Pau had staggered away, falling to her knees and when T'Pol looked up she could only smile a mixed expression of coital bliss and spiteful indignation at the verdant flush of the minister's face and her heaving breath. If she should ever be forced to fulfill the call of the Pon-farr she would forever remember the stolen memory and the fire of the plak tow would be like ash in her mouth. The victory quickly gave way to sorrow as she longed to feel his warmth and touch, the gentle way he held her after the crash of her body demolished the tenuous threads of composure that remained. The way that night, he had rolled onto his back, carrying her with him clutched in those arms as she softly wept into his chest. She didn't understand then why she had shed the tears, did not understand why she had felt the need to do so after reliving the physical experience of it. So she had sobbed without shame into the carpet as the two Ministers who had served as co-conspirators looked upon T'Pau with a severity that bespoke the outrage at what had been done to T'Pol. To determine whether her mate was indeed worthy of the title was one thing, to probe into these intimate places that were to be only between he and she was another matter entirely. Without fanfare they issued words of remorse and left the room leaving the two women to recover from the ordeal.

T'Pau had sat in the silence punctuated only by T'Pol's gasping sobs and occasional stuttering jerk as some bit of muscle and nerve memory coaxed another torrent of spasms from her. Finally she rose on what seemed to be weak knees and issued an apology in the form of three rather unexpected words, "I was wrong." T'Pol wasn't sure how long she had lay there, before exhaustion from the mental and physical abashment left her to drift into sleep lying still on the carpet.

When she had come to, she had abruptly rose, remembering every detail of what occurred and once again feeling the ache of want, she wanted the comfort in his presence, it always made her feel secure to know that he was there. In spite of his bumbling oft childish facade she could almost physically feel the warmth of his affection when they were close, it wasn't explainable as an aspect of the bond, she just somehow knew he loved her unconditionally and would do whatever he needed to in order to protect her. Protection? She had found the idea almost laughable, what did she need protection from? The Trellium-D exposure was over, the Pa'nar syndrome had been cured, what did she have left to fear? Her own people, of course, how simple it was. If recognizing the marriage's legitimacy brought Vulcan political currency, it would be embraced, at least in as far as MCS would be concerned, but they could just as easily split them apart by refusing to recognize their child's birthright, leaving it outside Vulcan society to exist in a limbo where it could neither be human nor Vulcan and subsequently ostracized by both. Still, if T'Pau and the High Command sought to hold this over her head, over their heads, as a way to leverage the couple and the children they would produce to their own benefit, they would find that T'Pol was not entirely without weapons herself. She lifted herself from her huddled position on her mate's bunk and made her way over to the computer console on the impossibly small desk in the cramped quarters. Opening up a communication program she connected to the Vulcan Embassy.

"This is T'Pol of Vulcan, I must speak to ambassador Soval, it is a matter of utmost urgency."

* * *

><p>"Vulcan military ineffectiveness is what allowed this disaster to occur in the first place!"<p>

Shran always considered Diplomatic-Adjunct Havarshis to be a blow-hard, he couldn't see the ice-field for the glaciers most of the time and when he was in truly rare form, reality seemed to be an utterly lost cause for him. It wasn't that Shran didn't dislike the Vulcans, hells below, he couldn't stand most of them. They were smug, condescending, and dismissive always putting on airs and trying to play the part of the sophisticate. But the fact remained the Diplomatic-Adjunct had ignored was that two Andorian ships had been similarly taken by surprise and subsequently dispatched without any evidence they had any success in damaging the aggressors.

The fact Chief Diplomatic Officer Tularn had not sought to reign in her underling was an interesting development that Shran could not fully reconcile. If Havarshis had been under his command he would have had him immediately removed and summarily flogged, everything could be undermined by hasty and ill-conceived words and Havarshis seemed to be competent only in that particular realm. One thing Shran had learned though, was that Tularn liked to gauge the situation carefully, her inaction in regards with Havarshis was likely a calculated move to determine the stance of the Vulcans and Humans. This would not, after all, be as simple as hunting pirates or the like. She could undue any damage he had managed to do and quickly quash him if necessary. As it was, she wanted to know to what degree these humans were willing to bleed for Vulcan and, if Romulan aggression should prove to be universally directed, Andoria as well.

All the reports and footage from _Enterprise_ indicated that the Romulans had brought a fleet of over fifty ships, bearing in mind the fact that Vulcan's fleet was spread out across dozens of system engaged in exploration, trade, and colonization efforts, even a judiciously sized Vulcan home defense flotilla would have stood virtually no chance against the Romulans. The fact that all of Vulcan's defensive cruisers had been able to escape was a testament to how cool headed they were under fire. Shran had to, grudgingly, admit that the past week in close contact with the Vulcans had given him a new respect for his traditional adversaries. And these humans...never had he met a more mercurial race. They ran the gamut of quietly stolid and expressively emotive, peaceful idealists and bellicose men-of-war, fiercely individualistic and cruelly regimented. It was almost as if they were at once Vulcan and Andorian, he reflected that it must be indeed strange to look into a mirror that also reminded you of your foe. Specifically, Shran saw them as neither Vulcan or Andorian but something novel, beings whose concept of right wasn't necessarily rooted in self interest.

From a purely hegemonic perspective, there would be nothing to prevent the humans from annexing both Andoria and Vulcan. They had beaten back the Klingons, they had stymied and pacified the enigmatic and technologically sophisticated Xindi, and just one of their warships had managed to bloody the nose of the Romulan occupation task force. If Andoria could muster that kind of power, they would have annexed a sizable portion of the Alpha Quadrant by this point. But these humans, they almost seemed to go out of their way to be accommodating even while both his and the Vulcan government were pushing for ridiculous concessions. At least one of the humans, the ground force coordinator, Major General Oliver Tully, had at a number of points looked like he wanted to start strangling the delegates, but managed to remain quiet and sit by as the nonsense continued. Tully had the look of a man who had done his fair share of fighting over the years, and short of occasionally adding some bit of minutia regarding how many Marine Expeditionary Units were slated to participate he most just sat there looking irritated, his right knee bouncing spastically.

"That is a patently unfair assessment." One of the human admirals grumbled.

"Your soldiers are dying on Vulcan now because the Vulcan military and government allowed this to happen through their incompetence." Havashis thundered, his plump face flushing a darker shade of blue.

"Yes, they are. Human marines are dying to help defend Vulcan even as we speak, and if we wish to avoid more deaths it is in our interest to act now. I have no desire to see human blood spilled for Vulcan, but they have had the courage and fortitude to volunteer exactly to that end." Ambassador Soval interrupted in a measured tone. Soval was the type of Vulcan who made it abundantly clear when he was irritated; he didn't keep his voice as even, his posture as straight, or his expression as plain as most of his colleagues, doubtless a result of his years in close contact with humans. "While we sit here debating and haggling for concessions more Vulcans and Humans are dying. For every hour we waste and allow the enemy free reign to maneuver, we will condemn more marines to death. Rather than waste more time at the cost of blood, I propose we allow the Humans full control of the expeditionary group as their expertise in such matters clearly outstrips that of Vulcan in this regard and there is no logic in endangering more Andorian lives than are necessary. Military Command Starfleet has made generous concessions to all parties involved; their marines will be the brunt of the assault on Romulan forces on Vulcan, their fleet will carry the battle above, and courtesy of their relationship with the Tellerites and Rigellians adequate supply and relief will be available to combatant forces. In addition there is a eighteen warship task group slated to provide additional defense for Andoria." The Vulcan closed his eyes, obviously trying to maintain some modicum of control over his emotions and a voice steadily increasing in volume. "With this in mind, I recommend that all parties involved leave this matter to the professionals, of which only MCS seems to adequately fit the descriptor."

Shran slammed an open palm on the table, letting out a short harsh guffaw, "Now I have heard it all...a Vulcan than talks like an Andorian. You've done a good job deprogramming him, pink skins!"

Soval ignored the comment, instead fixing his glare on the assembled ministers of the High Command. T'Pau in particular bore the brunt of his ire, what she had done to the daughter of her third cousin was inexcusable. Even if there had been questions over who she had deemed to marry, it was not for the High Command to involve themselves. While the meld was not directly forced, using the welfare of the unborn for leverage was wholly inexcusable. The young Minister had shown her lack of discipline, and while Soval was a mere ambassador, he was widely respected on both Vulcan and Earth. If MCS was to learn that the mother of one of their bravest officer's child had been so ill used by the High Command, the mere weight of political repercussions would destroy T'Pau. The fact that T'Pol had asked only that Soval pressure the High Command into ceasing the forestalling was a testament to her maturity as far as he could see it. T'Pau seemed profoundly disquieted and unfocused, it was completely out of character for the Minister who had gained her position by virtue of her position in the Syrranite sect and what was perceived as the maturity of a Kolinahr master.

"The High Command at this time can think of no reason to further stall the commencement of operations. It would be illogical to stall the deployment of forces any longer. The Vulcan High Command further pledges assistance to the Andorian Empire if it should require assistance in the wake of the Romulan threat. It is logical to put past animosity between our peoples to a rest in the interest of mutual defense." Minister Kuvak intoned calmly, extending a gaze over to the Andorian delegation.

Tularn gave Shran a nod, indicating that he was authorized to speak for the Imperial Guard. His superiors had made it abundantly clear that as long as Vulcan could rely on the humans for assistance, it was not in Andoria's interests to pursue belligerence with their perennial foes, and in the wake of the loss of two cruisers, seeking alliance in former adversaries was political and strategically desirable. Havashis opened his mouth to counter but was quickly supplanted by Commander Shran. "The Andorian Imperial Guard welcomes the opportunity to fight alongside Vulcan against our mutual enemy. We also look forward to seeing what you vaunted pink skins are capable of."

Diplomatic Officer Tularn noticed that the humans bristled slightly under the reference to their skin, it was likely something she would have to research further if and when Andoria extended a diplomatic mission to Earth. For the time being she could at least say that Earth, Ambassador Soval, and the Imperial Guard were on the same page in terms of what must be done. If Andoria was willing to bleed for Vulcan and alongside the humans it gave them serious political capital, it also could give them in-roads to the substantial Tellerite and Rigellian financial machines. The Romulans would have to be dealt with regardless, it was only a matter of time before they would move to either annex Andoria or press them into client state status. Standing together with the Vulcans and, by proxy, the Humans was the only way for Andoria to continue to guide its own destiny. Now was her chance to adequately undo any damage that had been done by her delegation in the days prior. The only concession she sought was that Andoria maintain its sovereignty on its terms until which point it was willing to concede portions of it. At the moment a deeper military alliance with the Humans was looking deeply beneficial and certain concessions could be readily made to that end. She rose to her feet as she spoke, "It is my belief that our joint task group could lay the ground work for further cooperation among our people. I, and the Andorian Empire, look forward to that eventuality."

* * *

><p>Trip idly wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his gloved hand, the fact he was still managing to sweat was a good thing, he was relatively certain he had lost about twelve pounds since they landed. The realization they were in the middle of the Vulcan summer had struck him halfway through the Forge. The heat had been so pronounced that not even the Selhats had bothered to show up after sundown. In many ways it was like life in general had evacuated the heat blasted sink-hole to places that were more hospitable, if there was anything that could be considered remotely hospitable about the Vulcan ecosystem. Even the Vulcan commandos were gassed by the time they had marched out. The fact that the squad had managed to march out at all was something of a feat that they would likely reminisce about for years to come; provided they all lived through this.<p>

Apparently V'Las wasn't on the best terms with the new Overlords; the Vulcan Science Academy had been garrisoned by a force of Romulans who were likely there to ensure that their control of the planetary information network wouldn't suffer any further setbacks. It also meant that the system was inherently vulnerable and if what T'Les and he had devised would work, they could effectively lock the Romulans out altogether. But first they had to get inside, there-in lie the immediate dilemma. It was relatively simple to assume that they weren't going to be able to just walk in. So far they had spent the last twelve hours observing the patrol patterns of the hostile personnel and could determine there were perhaps one hundred total.

Still, if they could get in and lock out the system it would play hell with Romulan C2 and maybe give MAC-V some breathing room. Somewhere in Shi'kahr there were around seven hundred Vulcan local forces troops that could help bolster Camp Kelly, and if he could just throw a monkey wrench in the Romulans' operational preparedness there was a chance that a good number of the Marines would be walking out of this alive. The two SID Section 31 agents had already painted a bleak picture, there were somewhere between 35 and 48 thousand Romulans within the Shi'kahr theatre, an area of 11,300 square kilometers radiating out from the center of the capitol.

The two agents were, themselves, an esoteric pair; the idea of a Vulcan working with the operations section of Earth's Intelligence agency was amusing enough, the fact that he was on Earth's payroll and a fully recognized part of United Earth's Intelligence and Espionage group was even funnier. Of course he seemed about as Vulcan as Trip did on a good day. With the exception of the eyebrows, ears, and his flat inflection-free way of speaking, he acted just like a human. When they linked up, Tucker had offered the traditional Ta'al, only to have the Vulcan extend a hand for a good old fashioned shake. It was nice to have two more shooters with his section and the four Vulcan security officers that had been sent for T'Les, but the fourteen of them against the one hundred plus Romulans inside the Science Academy were long odds.

"It'll be dark tonight, if we move then we will have the advantage. Romulan personnel have bingo NVDs." Suvak stated with a flatness that reminded Trip once again that he was Vulcan.

"I don't suppose there are any possible reinforcements in the area?" Trip asked quietly out of some instinctual mandate that went along with sneaking.

"Negative, we diverted all local forces assets to Camp Kelly. Colonel Shelby could use the slack more than we can." Suvak replied.

"Alright, I gotta ask you again...are you really Vulcan?"

"Human mannerisms are more efficient for combat situations. I am a great admirer of your race's tactical doctrine and practices. It is logical to emulate them," He nodded his head over at the four other Vulcans, "besides, it irritates the pogues."

"Just when I think I've got you people figured out..."

Gaddson slipped next to them, hugging the rock outcropping, "You get one pregnant... The Scuttlebutt has already been traveling around the Marine outfits, Commander. You're something of a celebrity."

"I haven't even managed that one, yet." Suvak commented, the flatness in his voice could be portraying ire or amusement, or maybe a bit of both.

"It's going to take a human woman to satisfy you, Suvak." Gaddson quipped, "Or maybe an Andorian."

"Split the difference, make it an Orion..." The Vulcan paused, "Check that, two Orions, in case one starts to become too...rudimentary. Regardless, congratulations Commander, assuming such a gesture is warranted."

"I'm happy as a clam, mister Suvak. My ko-telsu seems pretty pleased too." Trip stared off at the sky, darkening in the east as the sun began its final leg of its trek over the hemisphere, a wistful look on his face. "Kind of want to make sure our little girl, or boy, can come see momma's homeworld. To that end, gentlemen..."

"I know the layout of the Science Academy well, and there are Ministry of Security agents within the staff of the Academy, providing they have not been discovered and-or killed." Suvak declared as he once again eyed the perimeter through a pair of binoculars.

"The four security officers with us aren't going to have NODs, we should probably put them on slack durin' insertion." Trip commented, it was a tactical liability that had already been considered but he wanted to get it out there if it hadn't been taken into consideration.

"We were thinking the same thing." Gaddson replied, his voice showing the first hints of exhaustion.

"When was the last time you got any sleep? Either of you." The engineer inquired, it suddenly becoming evident that neither operator had likely found the opportunity to get a little much needed shut-eye.

"We're on about day three." The human operative declared with unexpected candor.

Trip eyed the two with more than a little concern tingeing his expression. Each of his section had been able to get at least four hours sleep within the past two days, it was hardly ideal but every little bit helped. "And before that?"

"Mister Gaddson has had about seven hours sleep within the past one hundred forty four hours, I have had approximately five." The Vulcan answered.

"Well, it's not exactly my place to say, but maybe you gentlemen should grab a few hours before we step off as oh-dark thirty."

Gaddson cocked both brows skyward, "I could use a little shut-eye."

"I would similarly benefit from a little sleep." Suvak noted.

"Get to it fellahs, I'll make sure you get a wakeup call at twenty three hundred."

"Roger that." Suvak offered as the two slinked back away from the outcropping and to the recessed area in the rocks where the rest of the section and the four Vulcan security soldiers sat.

Trip reflected how at a distance they would be totally indistinguishable from Vulcans on a pilgrimage, the heavy desert robes obscuring their equipment and likely not brokering a second glance from any Romulans that may have seen them at range. Trip started to wonder to himself if perhaps his child with T'Pol would be able to fit in among humans as well as Suvak did. Of course the possibility existed that it would be among Vulcans that the child would find acclimation a strain. There was nothing to go on in this regard, would the child be more human or more Vulcan, or would it occupy a happy medium? Would it ever truly fit in anywhere? It was a scary concept, that bringing the child into the world would be the biggest disservice they could ever do it. The thought weighed on him, no child ever asked to be born, but would this child forever damn his or her parents for being brought into a world that it would never belong in? There was only one thing he could guarantee for his unborn offspring, that he would love it unconditionally and always strive to be the best parent he could.

In his mind he felt a strange sense of acceptance, a subtle softness that seemed to be nothing if not reassurance. His best would always be good enough as long as he truly tried his utmost, his child would love him even if it was in a strange way that neither would fully understand. T'Pol may be carrying the child, but he had given it life just as sure as she had. For just a moment, he allowed his eyes to drift shut, trying to reach out to find the place where the child lay in the great infinite expanse of space and consciousness. If what T'Pol had said when he saw her last was true, then he was connected to their offspring just as surely as she was. A special bond between parent and child, and through their mutual bond to child, they were still bonded to one another despite the sudden disconnect created by his primitive unconscious mind. He found himself surrounded by utter darkness, an inky impenetrable black that had a distinct feeling of weight. It was like being trapped under thousands of feet of water, but still able to somehow breath but just barely as the pressure constricted the lungs, and slowed the blood. The sensation was fearful, frightening on a subtle and elemental level that made him want to swim up and away, back to the waking surface where he could gasp for unrestricted air, but something drove him one. Curiosity, a need to know, to know if he could reach out to his child, if he could feel the bundle of cells that would one day open eyes to the world. There was an inexorable pull, towards what he did not know, but as he plodded onwards under the oppressive encompassing, he began to notice the black had started to give way to a muted charcoal, as if something was projecting light outwards into the impossibly heavy darkness.

He reflected momentarily that it was perhaps possible that no matter how or where he moved, he would inexorably be moved to this point, towards the growing light that shifted the black to progressively warmer shades of grey. The pressure seemed to ease with the lightening of his surroundings and he felt a sort of urgency, pulling him forward. It was almost as if there was a voice somewhere, just beyond what he could adequately grasp, but he still managed to synthesize the words.

_Danger. Despair. Fear. Danger. Threat. Help. Fear._

He began to run, or rather his mental projection ran. It was a sensation akin to running, trying to make it to the danger, to protect what was endangered, not sure what it was but feeling an undeniable mandate to do so. Gray washed into white, and in the distance he could see two shapes and an impossibly luminous object. He ran faster, pushing himself forward, his breathing ceasing as the single focus of reaching the thing he must ward became a drive stronger than instinct and rudimentary biology. He just began to notice that one shape was familiar; T'Pol, kneeling and holding the source of the light close to her. He shouted her name, but it came out as a great and horrible thundering bray, like a hundred angry buffalo, a thousand squealing tires, and a million dungchen horns over the sounds of the Heart Sutra . The other shape, the other being turned quickly at the sound, another Vulcan woman her hair and garb that of an ascetic, there was terror on her face. Looming as she had been over T'Pol he understood her as the threat, the thing the voice had been calling him to ward off. The Vulcan woman backed away, and when he shouted to demand who she was, all he could hear was the horrible blaring again, a sound that, strangely caused the light to brighten further, bathing T'Pol in impossible radiance and blinding the intruder.

He suddenly knew he was alone with the light, despite her presence there T'Pol was absent as a presence in his mind, her form residual in as much as it was connected to the light...to his child. He approached with trembling hands, suddenly choking on sobs and tears as he drew closer and closer to the core of luminosity, the refulgent sphere, perfect and holy.

_Father._

"Commander, sir...it's twenty three fifteen sir."

Trip started, his body jerking as he returned to consciousness. He didn't bother to ask if he was out that long, it would have been counterproductive. He could feel a burning in his throat and in his eyes, like his body had tried to respond sympathetically to the sensations he experienced in the trance state but as if some conscious part of his mind had prevented him from doing so. Something was desperately wrong, but he couldn't discern what, though he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with Vulcan cultural politics. He had never wished more that he wasn't right about something, but the words he had said in Savannah had turned out to be prophetic. He once again felt the aching mandate, a need to finish this war quickly that pulled at him like hunger pangs, like some biological need that was beyond his capacity to ignore until it was sated. He would have to start the push to victory here and tonight. The initial apprehension, fourteen men against at least a hundred Romulans, it tugged at him only be quickly ripped asunder and replaced by a new feeling; pity. Woe to those Romulans that would face the fourteen _he_ would lead. Victory wasn't just a necessity, it was inevitable, because he did not believe down in the fibers of his being that any God that may exist would allow him to die before his child came into this world and the same metaphysical being would never let him face the increase of his loins with shame.

He rose, and moved back to where the team was assembled. The Marines and Section 31 operatives all had their night vision visors equipped, rifles at the ready in the deep indigo was of night. The four Vulcan security personnel were each equipped with one of the M43 Phase rifles that each of the MARSOC section carried as a back-up weapon should their ammunition run dry for their primary battle implements. Reaching down he pulled the 11.27 millimeter side-arm from the thigh holster and began quickly attached the suppressor to the spring-loaded locking lugs on the barrel bushing. He was still experiencing the wash of modified genetic aggression born of the instinctive desire to protect his woman and their child, his tone flat in a way that would have been abnormal to a Vulcan.

"Three man fire teams, even dispersion, echelon left. Indigenous personnel on rear guard, check fire until within seven meters. Reduce anything that appears hostile. Copy?"

"Aye, sir." Cummings calmly replied, his own genetic tendency towards surgical violence beginning to trigger sympathetically to the tone of Trip's voice and the aggression pheromones he was giving off.

**[! Author's Note !] Been really out of it lately, not sure whats wrong, but it took me forever to get this together and I realize it pretty much sucks. Working towards getting things back on track in the subsequent chapters.**


	13. Chapter 13

Suvak felt the reassuring tug of muzzle climb as the pop of the trinitrocellulose propellant sent a 270 grain projectile into the C2 vertebrae of the Romulan sentry at just a little over 287 meters per second. The flesh on his neck ballooned slightly at the effect of temporary wound cavitation hyper expanding the tissue as muscle frayed and blood vessels exploded. The suppressor did an excellent job of taming the sound, reducing the normal report to a sudden moderately loud slapping sound that was rapidly diminished. He always found it interesting that introducing a small volume of water into the baffling system helped to further reduce the produced audible signature. His target collapsed immediately as to his right, Gaddson put a round in the back of the other sentry's head. Tucker's approach was less dignified; a quick hand clapped over the mouth accompanied by a blade into the sub-thoracic region through the back, the knife withdrew in time to be shoved into the hip joint and then pulled deep into the neck across the throat. The ruined exsanguinating body collapsed amid those of its comrades, and Suvak heard Tucker's flared nostril snorting exhale, as he wiped the blade clean on the back of the Romulan's uniform. Sheathing the knife Tucker drew his service side-arm and they continued to the service entrance, each of the remaining Marines stepping over or past the bodies, leaving the Vulcans a moment of pause as they looked at the rapidly cooling corpses. One of them broke formation and walked closer to Suvak, speaking just below a whisper he asked, "Would not stunning them have been more appropriate?"

"A phaser beam is visible from seventeen hundred meters away on a clear night. The sound can carry for four hundred seventy five meters, and the target can get back up within hours. Those Romulans are no longer able to raise an alarm and the method of reducing them left no residual signatures that could be spotted by another patrol until their watch changes." Suvak replied with an operationally amplified Vulcan coldness, his own voice barely audible to anything but hyper-enhanced hearing.

"This treatment is barbarous."

"These are barbarous times. If I recall correctly, the Romulans invaded us first and have been killing our people. This is the logical and judicious course of action."

"Cut the chatter, get back to your section." Tucker snarled, no longer sounding like the affable human Suvak had met a dozen hours earlier.

Reaching the service entrance Suvak quickly approached the keypad and began inputting a High Command level override on the lock. The door hissed open as Tucker and Gaddson did a quick sweep of the area just inside with their side-arms, before turning their backs to the wall to allow Weller, Cummings, and Rolston entrance to the access corridor, Tanner, Manansala, and Calvin followed starting the outline of a 180 degree security sector. Salouis shepherded the four Vulcans in, leaving the vanguard of Tucker, Suvak and Gaddson to drag the three Romulan corpses into the narrow poorly lit utility hallway. Access panels for wall terminal systems ran the length of the slowly curving hall, everything was strangely uniform and pristine, distinctly Vulcan. Among other races this was the kind of place where you hid the screw-ups, the ugly seems, the wall sections that were not uniform and had been patched with oddly measured pieces to maintain the facade of perfect uniformity. Of course with life spans of two hundred plus years it was easy to take your time to make sure every last detail; every brick, every wall stud, ever panel was correct down to the millimeter.

"Doc, any Romulan life signs in this area?" Tucker let out as a horse whisper.

Salouis' face went white. "We're in their fuckin' billeting area!"

Without a word the Marines pulled suppressors for their rifles, quickly screwing off the flash suppressors to replace them with the sound dampening devices. They were effectively in the middle of the hornet's nest, if their presence was to be compromised they would be overrun in literally seconds. With a little situational awareness and the violence of action they could conceivably fight their way through, but there would be causalities, without a shadow of a doubt. Still, the marines and Tucker were almost inhumanly calm at the prospect of having to fight through close to a hundred Romulans. Suvak couldn't help but feel a pronounced degree of respect, the four Vulcan security agents didn't display nearly as much cool detachment. A human with a back against the wall was sublimely logical even if their reactions seemed irrational, there was always a level of frigid pragmatism. They turned their survival instinct into a weapon, and few seemed to be able to do so with as much proficiency as MCS MARSOC operators, in Suvak's experience.

"Suvak, how far from the administrative offices?" Tucker's voice once again took on the unearthly quality that meant his mind was the fire-control for his deadly battle focus.

"One five three meters east by north east." The Vulcan operative replied calmly, experiencing an exhilarating and totally illogical spike of confidence.

Trip walked over to one of the wall panels and stripped away the back access cover, exposing the chips and circuitry there-in. With practiced hands he pulled a small electronic device consisting of a scanner with a series of leads from his LBE. He stood for a moment, silently pressing the leads to various points in the exposed and softly glowing electronic innards of the wall device. Slowly, deliberately he moved the leads millimeter by millimeter, finally stopping and with flying fingers he began punching keys on the scanner. It took Suvak a minute to divine exactly what the human was doing, upon realizing he was pleased, Tucker was hijacking the academy security systems, rerouting internal sensors into an endless self diagnostic loop and locking out all security functions. The engineer accomplished in seconds what would have likely even taken Gaddson and himself many minutes.

"Salouis, let me see those Romulan biometrics." The de-facto leader demanded, extending his hand to the corpsman who placed the medical device in the engineering officer's hand. With a few taps he had transferred the readings from the medic's device to his own and began another series of operations, as soon as he had began the task, he finished, pulling the leads from the places he had hooked them in and returning the device to his LBE. With a quick twist and deft movement of his engineer's fingers he removed the flash hider from his rifle and attached his own suppressor. Approaching the four Vulcan he held up his side-arm by its own suppressor.

"Have you ever fired one of these?"

"The procedure seems fairly rudimentary." One of the four replied and took the weapon.

"Remember to compensate for the muzzle climb," He snatched a pair of magazines from the pouches attached to the thigh holster and handed them over, "The slide release is on the left side, there are nine shots per magazine, when it is empty the slide will lock to the rear until you replace the clip. Hit the slide release to chamber the first round, make each shot count." Tucker explained coolly.

Cummings, Tanner, and Weller all handed over their side arms to the remaining three Vulcans, who took the weapons, leaving their phaser rifles to hang from the slings. Without another word Tucker turned and began down the access corridor for the main academy wing, the other Marines and the Corpsman falling into step behind him. Suvak allowed the smallest hint of a Vulcan smile, the liberation of Vulcan would be starting here and tonight, nothing lay ahead but victory or death; it was so perfectly logical and yet it set fire to his ancient Vulcan blood. His people had been born for war, they just lacked the ability to control themselves. In battle and passion Vulcan were at their least disciplined, humans on the other hand seemed to be at their most when presented with the same things. Tucker was the battle master, the war lord, at this moment Suvak was his vassal and he would fight in a way that would make these servitors of the long-dead bird cower. He would make them beg for Surak, remind them of the horrors that had forced the schism between their people. All the discipline he had learned as a SID agent was gone, instead replaced by the burning fanaticism of warrior prophets, and the divine message would forever be remember as beginning in the halls of the Vulcan Science Academy on a late summer's night when eight humans, five Vulcans, and an erstwhile War God brought the new revelation.

As long as he could remember the desire for battle had been there, a strange urge that had been honed into a hunger during his training alongside the MCS Marines on Earth. The discipline, the procedure, the skill set; it was every bit as strict and unyielding as Surakian logic. It was the rough culmination of the ultimate and most unyielding logic, the rationality of violence and war. There came a point when a foe left no option than to be crushed, utterly, completely crushed. The humans had turned this into a science and an art; the martial aesthetic that was perfect in both unyielding application and whimsical design. It was as their music was, their art, their literature...it followed rules even when they were not immediately evident. He would need Surak after this night, he would need Kolinahr because he knew deep in his heart that his lust for battle would be unquenchable, this would be his ponn far, his plak tow.

* * *

><p>"Sir, all ships report the protocols for warp eight point one are in place, all ships of Gungnir and Tonbogiri report ready to make way." Hoshi cast eyes over to the Captain.<p>

Vulcan High Command had agreed to allow T'Pol to take the brevet rank of Commander in MCS for the duration of Task Force: Dragoon and Operation: Ancient Hammer, as such she was currently serving as first officer of _Enterprise_ while Hernandez had been brevetted captain to take command of _Columbia_. The two ships and their ten escorts would serve as the vanguard, hitting the Romulan forces first while _Revenge_, _Huron_, and _Liberty's_ flotillas would transport the five Marine Expeditionary Units to Vulcan proper.

"Engineering!" Archer shouted crisply.

"This is Engineering, go ahead, sir." Kelby's voice streamed through.

"Make preparations to get underway, warp eight point one if you please, mister Kelby."

"Aye, sir. Reactor core is prepped and ready sir, at your command, sir."

"Mister Mayweather, set course for Vulcan, engage on my mark." Archer's voice held a stony resolve, the cold hardness of a man who was preparing for war and praying those he left behind were still alive, but prepared to visit unholy vengeance in their stead if they were not. He nodded at Hoshi who brought up task group communications channels.

"To all ships, this is Enterprise, set course for Vulcan, best possible speed. Prepare to get underway on my mark..." He quickly cut eyes around the bridge, imagining Erika was doing the same as they prepare to make way into the lion's den. "Mark!"

No sooner had he said the words, Travis hit the warp drive and the fine points of stars became stretched lines as the ship jumped from standstill to roughly 1050 times the speed of light in the matter of a second. At her station T'Pol checked the readings, the entirety of the two flotillas had gone to warp and their fields were holding steady at a velocity of warp 8.1. Kelby, Hess, and Rostov had done an admirable job of ensuring the new warp protocols were implemented around the task group. It was unfortunate that time had not been available to ensure that the Vulcan and Andorian vessels would be able to match the speed. As it was, the MCS warships would arrive a full two days ahead of their Vulcan and Andorian reinforcements. Still, with five CGX class ships and a support component of twenty five DD and DDG class warships, the Romulan fleet had little to no chance of turning the battle in their favor.

"Captain, all ships show optimal status, all holding at warp eight point one zero zero two four. All engineering sections report green on reactor status." The Vulcan said calmly, working with every fiber of her being to maintain the facade of Surakian professionalism.

"Mister Reed, you have the conn. T'Pol, please join me in the ready room." Archer imparted as he crossed to his office just off the bridge.

T'Pol rose from the science station and followed as Reed crossed to the "big chair" his expression, like the captain's, was dour, the reality of going to war hanging over the bridge like a pall. Upon entering the room the door slid shot. Archer was turned away, his body rigid as he looked at a plaque on the wall of the small office. The tension in the room was obvious to T'Pol, it wasn't just the stress of their mission, she had experienced that type of environment repeatedly during the Xindi campaign. Based on his body language and the palpable discomfort in the room the Vulcan had to assume that something that Captain found a personal affront had occurred.

"T'Pol..." He began, his voice struggling to remain measured, "I was informed that you were assaulted by three members of the High Command."

"That is not a completely accurate characterization." She replied with tenuous inscrutability.

He turned to look at her, his face showing pronounced misgiving and a quiet form of seething rage. "Would you like to tell me what happened?"

T'Pol took a deep breath, hands clamping together behind her back, "There was a misunderstanding about Commander Tucker's genetics."

"Soval told me everything." Archer quickly rebutted, dashing any hope on T'Pol's part for a quick resolution.

"If that is the case I cannot see what more can be gained by my recounting of events."

"Are you alright? From what I heard from Soval it was an intensely personal invasion." He continued to press.

"I am fine, what was done has been done," She misdirected easily, despite the fact that she was still intensely disquieted by the forced meld, "There is no need to reflect on it further."

Archer sighed, he almost preferred the idea of her being a total basket case. At least then he wouldn't have to discuss what he knew he would have to get out in the open. He didn't even want to acknowledge the possibility himself, but it was an issue of decidedly greater importance to her given the events of recent. Reluctance threatened to choke the words, a kind of fear that made elucidation impossible and defied and tyrannically prevented words from taking shape. Damnit, he was his friend too, and now they had the very real posibility that he was already dead, what then? What would become of the child? If he was to do right by his friend he would have to help raise the child, but the air had to be cleared.

"T'Pol..." He took a deep breath and forced the words, it was almost physically painful, "There is a chance that Trip is already dead, we have-"

"No." T'Pol's voice was insistent, almost defiant, "He is not. He will _not_ die. We shouldn't even consider or say it."

"T'Pol..."

"Captain, Trip...Command Tucker, is the most defiant, intractable person you or I are likely to ever know, do you honestly think he would let something kill him before he had the opportunity to see his child?"

There was something very human about what she said, but it was strangely logical. Trip was brash, impulsive, sometimes almost impossibly so, but he was also smart, beyond smart he was clever, cunning, he had horse sense as well as bookishness. He cheated the odds, consistently, he got away with what would send most people to the hospital or morgue, he made regular visits to Phlox, a burned hand, a dislocated finger, a cut palm...but it was always the bare minimum payment to the piper where in most situations he should have had major body coverage burns, severed limbs, and avulsed bone breaks. Of course the end result of his devil's own luck was that he would likely die from choking to death on a sunflower seed or some such nonsense further down the road, but she was right. Trip was the sort who would punch death in the throat and run back before he could be dragged off into the here-after. The reason he had been so insistent about considering the un-considerable was the fact that it was such an alien concept so one had to prepare extensively for it.

Archer allowed part of a grin to crack through the stony facade of his face, "Commander, that's not a very logical assessment."

"Based on past observations it seems to be logical to assume that Command Tucker has a statistical advantage in regards to avoiding mutilation or mortality," T'Pol let her eyebrows approximate a smirk.

"Okay, I'll give you that..." It was strange, but T'Pol had managed to make him feel better, a complete reversal from what he had expected coming into the office, "But back to the matter at hand, are you feeling alright after...what happened?"

"I am noticing a slight increase in fatigue and a slight increase in my metabolic requirements. I believe this could be the result of my body compensating for the impending stressors of pregnancy."

Archer had worried about this, he would have to have a talk with Phlox as to what to expect from a Vulcan pregnancy if she was going to be staying with the ship. "Do you require more rest, fewer duty hours?"

"I do not believe that will be necessary, I simply will have to increase my caloric intake seven point three one percent and maintain a regimen whereby I can spend at least three hours a night in a sleep state. Barring emergencies of course."

Jon nodded, it was somehow comforting to hear T'Pol being T'Pol in the wake of it all. He was going to have a lot of consideration to do as ship's captain in the next few weeks and months. From what T'Pol had said days ago in the ready room after her revelation to Trip over the communications system, she had said that he always insisted on maintaining discipline during a tour of duty. Still, if they wanted to cohabitate it would be wrong to separate a couple, at the same time it would free up one set of quarters for someone. Rationally speaking it would be Trip moving into her quarters rather than trying to stick the both of them in that broom closet Trip was in. He still remembered the day Tucker had jokingly pointed out that his quarters were actually three inches narrower than the standard single occupancy quarters by virtue of their location on the ship at a bulkhead junction that was used as a tertiary storage room on every other deck. Of course, he could always schedule them in a floating shift type scenario where-in one was on while the other was off, meaning they could effectively hot-rack, but what was the point of sharing quarters then?

Fortunately he didn't have to give much time to reflection in this regard. He was feeling a little twinge of jealousy toward Trip, he still carried a torch for Erika and probably always would, but T'Pol was very pleasing on the eye and he had wondered more than once what a Vulcan was like in the sack. One day he would have to put the question to his friend in a more private setting. But now, he had an equally intimate question for T'Pol. It was another awkward thing to discuss, but not nearly so much so as had the issue of considering the fact that Trip might have already been KIAed.

"Have you two considered a human ceremony?"

"We have, actually. We were fairly certain it was only logical that we be bonded under both species' customs, we just have not given further thought to location, time, or nature of the human wedding ceremony."

"I can actually perform that ceremony as ship's captain if you two would like."

T'Pol took a moment before responding, as if contemplating a number of contingencies, a thing her Vulcan brain could do at a speed that necessitated little more than a few moments' silence. "I believe we would prefer a slightly more traditional approach rooted in human culture rather than the more abridged legal proceedings. The kal-i-farr and koon-ut-kal-if-fee are ceremonies bound in ancient tradition, it would not be equivalently egalitarian on my part if I did not similarly seek to understand the human traditional aspects of our bond."

"Fair enough, but it might be a while before the ceremony can occur, we're effectively at war and I'm not sure when we're going to put back in to Earth." Archer replied pointedly.

"If necessary we can wait until after the birth to avoid the appearance of a 'shotgun' wedding." Once again her brows arched in amusement.

"Did you get a hold of Trip's parents while we were back at Earth?"

The Vulcan's facial expression approximated an uncomfortable fidget. "I believed it would be more appropriate for him to contact his parents."

"Do they not know about you two?"

"They are aware of the nature of our relationship." T'Pol replied in a halting manner, remembering the strange episode she had endured on the couch.

"Do they know they've got a grandbaby on the way?"

"Would it not be more logical for Commander Tucker to inform them of such? It would be my impression that they would prefer to hear the news from their own offspring."

"Sometimes hearing it from the spouse helps reinforce the idea that they are considered part of your family now." Archer offered, understanding the dynamic even if he had never been privy to it himself. "If you were to contact and inform them it would serve to let them know you consider them step-mother and father, it also might soften the blow that Trip is currently deployed on Vulcan. I'm sure they're worried about him."

"You make an excellent point Captain, that would be the logical course of action."

Archer smiled, the conversation had inadvertently managed to assuage many of the fears about Trip's fate, though he found himself pondering; was her refusal to accept the idea of his mortality a defense mechanism, a logical argument, or was it because she genuinely did love him in her strange Vulcan way? There was plenty to worry about at the moment. Doubtlessly the Romulans had fortified their defensive perimeter around Vulcan, and even if he was bringing a battle hardened fleet group, this was still going to be a hard won battle. In spite of the fact that he would have much rather had Hernandez on his bridge, he was at the very least reassured by the fact that it would be here in _Columbia_ and not a captain he had never worked with before. The eight destroyers and two frigates had all participated in the Xindi campaign as part of Task Force: Saber and Task Force: Zouave, the _Clifton Sprague _and _Itō Sukeyuki_ under Captains Georg Kapp and Mark Walt led the two groups, each remaining destroyer under a Commander and the pair of frigates commanded by a Lieutenant Commander. Archer knew he could count on the two captains and their respective subordinates to bring a fight, he knew Erika had the makings of one of the most aggressive cruiser captains in MCS, he just wasn't entirely sure it would be enough to break the Romulan formations and force them to wheel away from Vulcan for the remainder of the Task Group to make its troop drops.

"You know, we'll be close enough to Earth for another hour for you to get a real-time connection. Why don't you go drop them a message? You're not on until sixteen hundred anyway." Jonathan suggested, hoping she would take it as a friendly idea rather than a prod from her commanding officer.

She tilted her head a moment as if contemplating, "I believe that would be a prudent course of action, I shall go do so."

"Alright then, dismissed."

T'Pol exited the ready room ahead of Archer and made for her science station. Hoshi immediately noted that rather than return to her seat, she simply punched in a series of key commands and made for the turbo lift. It wasn't completely unusual, T'Pol was not scheduled to be on shift for another eight hours, it was clear she intended to attend to other matters, but there was something oddly stiff about her body language, even more so than usual. Something was bothering her, without a shadow of a doubt something had her in profound mental or physical discomfort. The communications officer glanced over to the captain, if he was aware he showed absolutely no sign of it. No, he had to be unaware, he had always been very easy for Sato to read, and the way he looked and carried himself now, he was utterly oblivious to the obvious pain T'Pol was experiencing. Hoshi shot a worried look over to Reed who was returning to his station after the short sit in the "big chair." The tactical officer shot an inquisitive eyebrow skyward to which Hoshi mouthed the word "later" and he nodded in the affirmative. Something was definitely wrong, and for the sake of Trip's baby, if not for T'Pol, Hoshi intended to find out what. This entire situation had to be very hard on her to begin with, and while Sato was certain the stolid Vulcan would make it through, the child-to-be inside her was certainly not as resilient and infinitely more vulnerable.

T'Pol held her composure until the turbo lift doors shut and nearly collapsed. The pain was excruciating, and she could not determine its source; this fact along bothered her more than anything. She focused on the sensation of it, tried to trace back the glass and razorblades sensation to its point of origin and found it was sapping every ounce of her reserve to do so. She had to make it to sickbay, something was very wrong and she did not know or understand what. Still she followed the hurt, up through her legs and down through her shoulders and arms towards her core, the package of organs responsible for her life. When she finally found the pulsating source of the agony, she choked back a sob of fear; it was in her womb.

* * *

><p>What had begun as three reduced sentries was now a full-fledged fire fight, a fact that illogically overjoyed Suvak. Stealth was not longer an operational parameter, but the Suppressors kept the report of their assault rifles down to a point where they wouldn't be fire-deaf. The Romulan garrison forces figured out something was wrong just before they reached the Academy Chancellor's offices, upon trying to force the doors open they discovered the first surprised Tucker had left for them as all the conduits in the room exploded from catastrophic overload. No alarms had gone off, Tucker had, rendered them silent through locking security systems into a diagnostic cycle. The twenty Romulans who had immediately headed for the offices had been reduced to eight in a matter of seconds, and the thirty who immediately came to reinforce them were now pinned down, returning fire to little effect.<p>

Suvak remembered an all purpose phrase that the Marines he had trained alongside were fond of. It could be used for virtually any situation where an individual was meaning to express approval or adulation, the pitch, volume, and timbre were the primary indication of the feelings being experienced by the speaker. He emulated it now, because it was the logical situation to do so.

"Get some!" He shouted it as a human would as he depressed the trigger assembly twice in rapid succession, catching one of the invaders low in the mid thoracic, knocking him over backwards as his legs went out from under him at unwieldy angles.

In defiance of the fire savaging them, the Romulan troops attempted to push forward, to find the third in a series of traps that had been arrayed for them as Rolston detonated a pair of egg shaped anti-personnel directional mines. The curtain of steel balls was evidenced only by the mist of green blood and smoke as it obliterated the five hostiles that formed the vanguard.

"Frag out!" The bistre skinned Corporal Calvin shouted as he lobbed what Suvak immediately identified as an M74 hand grenade into the stalled Romulan advance. Weller took advantage of the confusion in the enemy's ranks and began squeezing carefully aimed bursts from his squad automatic weapon into the Romulans. The deep stuttering bray of the gun filling the foyer from which they were fighting as rounds passed through bodies and skipped off the marble of the floors to find rest in walls or furniture.

Suvak emptied the remainder of his clip into a knot of four hostiles, forcing the cry from Tanner and Manansala who both echoed the "Get some" battle shout. Tucker stepped into the open hall and quickly emptied a clip in a quick semi-automatic frenzy of fire into a second wave of Romulan reinforcements approaching from across the vast open hall their comrades were pinned down in. Three fell apparently dead or unconscious while another five appeared critically injured with another two injured but ambulatory.

"Suvak, Gaddson, Rolston, on me!" The Engineer bellowed. They rose to follow as the human stepped back to the door leading to the offices and the cloistered individuals inside, the four Vulcan security personnel looked at the lock helplessly then back to the Engineer.

"The system has a layer of encryption we are not privy too, all attempts to break the code have been fruitless." One of the Vulcans intoned.

"That's fine, head back to the others and lay some suppressive fire with the phaser rifles." Tucker did not hide his irritation, but Suvak could immediately tell it was not directed at the four Vulcan soldiers.

Gaddson spoke with calm professionalism, "Ideas, commander Tucker?"

"They put a dead-bolt on a screen door. Gonna fix it the southern way."

Before Suvak could ask, the human took a few steps back and kicked the door with a resounding bang. Taking a rocking step back he slammed his booted right foot into the middle of the door again, with an audible creak, then once again took the preparatory step backwards and slammed the sole of the boot into the seam of the door again, this time with a loud thump followed by the protesting sound of motors, the door slid open part way. Rolston and Suvak grabbed the edges of the door panels and forced it open leaving the engineer and SID agent to lead the way into the room rifles raised. A trio of green disrupter bolts immediately sailed at the pair of humans. Two of the pointed eared humanoids and two of the bat-faced monstrosities were arrayed behind the wide desk of the Academy's Head using it as an impromptu fighting position. Trip had already acquired one of the monsters and tugged the trigger to break four times in rapid succession, his sight picture placing the four bullets into the upper chest of the creature which dropped to the ground choking on bilious green blood. Moving the rifle barrel and sights over he felt the rifle dig at his shoulder as he put two more rounds right into the V of the pseudo-Vulcan's forehead as another disrupter bolt came from the other bat-person. Without waiting for Gaddson, Suvak, or Rolston, Trip put his sights on the creature and fired six rounds, allowing the slight muzzle climb to stitch a series of horrific wounds starting at the upper gastric and ending just below the throat. The creature collapsed back against the wall and slid down, eyes fixed forward as a gurgling his left its throat.

"Not today, Count Orlok."

The Vulcan still behind the desk stared at Trip with a mixture of horror and outrage, remarkably emotive for one of his race, Tucker reflected on momentarily. Behind him he heard a clatter and turned just in time to see Suvak kneeling next to the prone form of Gaddson.

"Corpsman!"

"Cover him." Tucker ordered Rolston and pointed in the direction of the Vulcan that clearly must have been V'Las with the muzzle of his suppressor tipped rifle.

The firefight in the Foyer had died down and Salouis was in the room in moments, bent over the injured human, shooing Suvak away to allow room to work. Tucker realized how bad it was the moment he lay eyes on the injuries. The skin on the right shoulder, part of the neck and upper arm were exposed where the clothing had been vaporized by the super high energy-transfer heat from a disrupter bolt, the skin was blackened and crisped and blood was seeping from the wounds; it was, almost without a doubt, a mortal wound. Gaddson opened his mouth and tried to speak but nothing came out, his eyes darted around the room, he swallowed and his expression showed the obvious pain at doing so. Salouis was already working on the downed operator, setting up a series of hypo spray injections to help fight off immediate infection risks, clean the blood impurities, and likely to take the edge off the pain, but without a triage center he was very limited on what he could do.

Gaddson raised his left hand and gestured Suvak to approach, upon reaching him the human once again tried to form words but nothing but a barely audible wheeze issued forth, prompting the Vulcan to kneel with his ear close to the SID agent's mouth. Gaddson's lips formed words and Suvak nodded grimly as the senior agent gave him instructions, knowing they were likely the last directives he would convey. Tucker exited the room to return to the Foyer where the fire fight seemed to have stopped entirely, leaving Salouis, Rolston, and the two Section 31 operators in the room along with the three dead Romulans and the flustered into silence V'Las.

When Tucker returned a few minutes later his expression was harsh and the four Vulcan security officers were in tow behind him. He approached V'Las with little hesitation and physically pulled the elder Vulcan to his feet. "Where are the controls for the dampening system?"

"I have no reason to answer you, human." His voice was riddled with ire even if his face showed no hints of it.

"You've lost this one, I'll find it even if I have to tear the Academy apart brick by brick, I've already got the code lines figured out. T'Les and I got it all broken down, now the real question is how much are you goin' to make your people suffer in the interstice."

"The only suffering that has occurred has been the suffering we have endured under the presence of you humans for the past thirty years." V'Las shot back with barely contained animus.

"We never wanted anything but to help your people, macvee existed for the purpose of preventin' things like this from happenin'!"

Suvak rose and pulled his side arm and snatched his combat knife from its sheath with his left hand. He took resolved steps towards V'Las. "Save your breath, Commander, this traitor is not worth reasoning with. There is only one argument that will win against him, a two hundred seventy grain argument at close range."

"Suvak...what are you doin'?" Trip's voice held concern and reservation.

"Field expedient execution procedure. It just seems illogical to waste a perfectly functional bullet." Suvak braced his right wrist across the left, the knife held underhand in the left so as to prevent the target from attempting to grab the firearm in his right.

"Stand down, we need him alive."

"To what end, Commander?" Suvak's finger tightened on the trigger.

"He's gonna have plenty to answer for, but we've gotta be better than him, give him a trial first, let the Vulcan legal system decide his fate." Tucker said calmly even as he prepared to disarm the Vulcan by force if need be.

Suvak shook his head, then lowered the weapons. "Apologies, Commander, I just want to see this...'son of a bitch'...burn."

"Go check on Gaddson."

"Jerry...his first name is Jerry, Commander, and I just want this bastard to know that he is my friend." Suvak's voice was measured but with an appreciable threat of violence contained there-in. He turned and walked back to Salouis and the stricken Section 31 agent.

Trip looked down on the traitor, shook his head and undid the chin strap of his helmet, pulling off the confining thermo-plastic and ballistic fiber shell. He ran a hand through his hair, feeling his scalp scream for mercy as hair that had been matted down for days on end suddenly re-awoke nerves to do their jobs.

"V'Las...Chancellor...whatever...I'm gonna get into the system anyway, the only question is how quickly I'll do it and how pissed you want everyone at you. We're gonna win this, regardless. You can kill every human on Vulcan right now, and there's still gonna be five Marine Expeditionary Units on the way, and each one of them is 'bout the size of macvee with full armor, air, and artillery support." Tucker tried to make a reasonable argument.

"There are over seventy thousand Romulans on this planet, five of your Marine units won't even amount to twenty thousand." V'Las countered as if it was an academic debate.

"That's true, but the eight humans and one human trained Vulcan just managed to kill sixty two of your buddies...what do you think a on-line combat company is gonna manage with air and artillery support for fire missions?" Tucker knelt, "Do yourself a favor...do your people a favor, make this easier."

V'Las let out a huffing breath, a semblance of a sigh, "You can access the network through my console, providing it is not damaged."

Salouis had just finished treated Jerry Gaddson when Trip began accessing the dampening network protocols. The Corpsman rose and walked back over to Tucker, his face a mask of uncertainty, his movement prompted Tucker to cut his eyes away from the work he was doing on the console and then lowered his eyes to it again. His lips pulled into a thin, wan line. From just a glance he knew that Salouis was not bringing good news.

"How bad is it?"

"I can't say for certain sir, it's bad, very bad. He might live, but he probably won't make it. He might have an hour, he might have a year, he might have eighty years. It's just too hard to call without better diagnostic equipment. One thing for sure, if we don't get him medical attention soon, he's gone." The medic replied, his face looking tired and eyes ringed by dark circles.

"You did what you could, maybe we'll get lucky. Start scannin' the academy for any Vulcan prisoners, we need to let 'em out now that we've shot the jailer."

"Aye, sir."

Tucker turned his full attention back to the console, setting the existing systems on a redundant loop of the program while he began manipulating the code lines by memory. T'Les had picked up on the vulnerability in the code almost immediately, to many of the root commands followed the same equation, from there it had only taken a few minutes for Trip to devise a way to hijack the entire system by altering one of the arguments in the programs governing sub routine. It was elegantly simple, yet complicated enough to avoid the downfall of being easily reversible. If someone tried to tamper with the code or revert it, he had altered the security sub routines to attack the offending program. In order to change the code you had to use the programs code, which left any potential interference platform vulnerable to a system corruption. It was elegant in its simplicity; he had simply picked one of the oldest laws of math, it would force the system to calculate a cascading series of figures as divided by zero. The error would lock the program before any alterations could be implemented, in a system that hadn't made adequate preparations to counter over-flow, it would act as a virus, infecting other systems with the same process and force a complete shutdown of the computer system and purge of the corrupted file. It was electronic warfare 101 in the twenty second century, the real trick would be to see if the Romulans understood the precept.

"Sir." Salouis approached again with the four Vulcans in tow, "I've found the staff and students that were left behind as well as the remainder of the security cadre. They're being held in a wing one hundred fifty four meters east of our position."

"Any Romulan presence detected?" Tucker asked without lifting his head.

"Negative, their guards apparently got schwacked with the rest of the garrison forces."

"Suvak!" Tucker shouted, pulling the Vulcan's attention away from his stricken comrade. "Take Tanner and these four and get over there and let those folks out, copy?"

"Roger." Suvak sprung to his feet, pulling the magazine from his assault rifle to check its capacity before snapping it back into place, "Let's move."

"Doc?" Tucker asked quietly once they had left.

"Sir?"

"Might as well make sure Gaddson is comfortable, no reason to keep him in pain at this point, is there?"

Salouis took a deep breath, "I've already given him a pain killer, any more and I'm worried I'll drop his blood pressure to low. Based on my readings he's not suffering at the moment."

Tucker let his voice soften, "Alright, good enough. Sorry this is turnin' out to be such a bear-fuck, Doc."

Salouis couldn't fight the grin at the commander's bit of profanity.

"There we go, that got the smile back." Trip chirped, himself fighting against the after-action adrenalin crash and a new set of worries and concerns. Looking back to the screen once again, he finished the last series of changes and saved the revised program as the overwrite for the master version on the systems File Transfer Protocol. In five minutes they would know for certain if it had worked or not. If the system accepted the revised version, he would have control of the entire dampening network and he would be able to turn it aggressively against the Romulans.

Crossing to an adjacent console, he punched up the Planetary Information Network, one of the conditional changes he made in the program was to remove the block against the wired portion of the network, allowing access through all the integrated systems on planet, which included the planetary defense batteries and the surveillance system, until which point the Romulans started shooting down the satellites.

He waited, feeling the seconds tick by with the beat of his heart, the "no signal" in florid Vulcan script seeming to glow with a slowly increasing intensity; sixty seconds, ninety, one hundred twenty then without warning the screen changed to a general alert message from the High Command.

"Rolston! Get me macvee now!" Trip barked.

"Aye, sir. Black flag, black flag, this is Barracuda, stand by for traffic from Barracuda actual." Rolston crossed and passed the hand-set to the engineer.

"Black flag, this is Barracuda actual, we have altered the dampening field, all MCS and High Command frequencies are now enabled, you should be able to assume control of planetary defense batteries, Aegis missile systems, and communications. Romulan targeting telemetry should still be blanked, you are go for arty and air, over."

"Wait one, Barracuda, confirming now."

Trip waited with held breath as the signal went quiet, the subtle and barely audible thump of the ultra low frequency signal the only sound. The seconds seemed to drag on slower than any he had ever experienced, thousands if not millions of lives were riding on this.

"Roger that, Barracuda, we confirm control restored, do you require evac? Over."

Trip let out a sigh of relief, "Negative, negative black flag, not at this time, we are walking indigenous persons out of the AO along with tier one collaborator person or persons. We have one critically wounded, will advise for evac when practical, over."

"Roger, Barracuda, we copy, damn good to have you on our side, sir. Black flag, out."

Trip handed the receiver back to Rolston and was just starting to grin when a familiar voice snatched his attention. "Charles Tucker?"

Trip turned and his face melted into one of confusion, surprise, and muted horror. What the hell was he doing here? "Koss?"

The Vulcan's face was large impassive except for the subtle shock evident in his eyebrows, "It is strangely agreeable to see you, Commander Tucker."


	14. Chapter 14

"Doctor!"

It was a feeble cry, wrought with as much and, perhaps, more emotionality and desperation one would expect from the issuer. T'Pol staggered into sick bay, the pain was overwhelming, but not as much as the fear. Losing the bond was suitably horrible, but if she were to lose the child too, it might be more than she could take. She found herself feeling instinctive maternal drives; nothing was more important at the moment than her child, and the idea of losing it was worse than anything that could ever possibly happen. Phlox was dutifully at her side helping her to a bio-bed within moments, his expression marred by the subtle frown and large sensitive eyes that marked his concern.

"What is the problem Commander, what happened?"

"The pain...the child, something is wrong." she let out in sobbing gasps.

"Remain still." He ordered and began running the scanner over her womb. His expression twisted into a mixture of relief and redirected concern, there was small reassurance in knowing that he was aware what was occurring in what was supposed to be the sacred bower for the codification of her and Trip's love.

"Your body is attacking the blastula. The human DNA has caused your body to assume it was under attack after implantation occurred. I cannot be certain if there was permanent damage done to the embryo but I can stop your body's attack reaction."

"Please, doctor, if Trip has been killed, this is all I have left of him." T'Pol grabbed his coat her eyes begging, giving deference to the unthinkable thing that Archer had proposed in the ready room minutes before.

"T'Pol, do not even consider such things. I...no, your child needs you to remain calm, stress is the worst thing you can do for your pregnancy right now. I understand there will be stress associated with our current mission and the dangers involved, but you need to believe that Commander Tucker is alright." He gently freed himself of her grip and approached one of the portable medical stations to prepare the immune response suppressant.

T'Pol took a series of deep breaths, trying a rudimentary meditation exercise to find calm. When the doctor re-approached he was bearing a long needle attached to a hypo spray assembly. She looked from the device to the Denobulan's face with concern.

"I will need to inject the medication directly into your uterus, there will be some discomfort, but it is the only way to ensure the solution is delivered quickly and effectively."

T'Pol nodded and the doctor gently lifted her tunic to expose her midriff and measuring two finger's width down from her navel inserted the needle in a quick smooth push. The pain was abating for some reason, she wasn't entirely sure why as she felt the cool fluid of the medical solution inject into the tissue of her uterus. Phlox withdrew the needle, and placed a small square of gauze over the injection site. T'Pol took a deep breath and allowed her eyes to close. Without any further effort she felt herself fall into the sub-meditative state where she had first accessed the presence of the embryo.

_Mother_.

The voice, seemingly thousands mixed into one, more a feeling than a sound caught her attention immediately. There was no visual component, just a washed over gray all around, completely obliterating anything pertaining to self-image. It was like she was trapped in a block of some light-impermeable substance, but she could feel the sensations of movement.

_Mother._

_I am here, ashal-kam._

_Father._

In response she heard a deep thrumming rumble, as the gray began to lighten giving way to the piercing point of light again, then she saw it, for a split second from above as if falling, she saw both herself and the Trip-thing kneeled, heads bowed, holding the sphere of light before she found herself in the place of her ego-projected self. She looked across to the monster, the coils of oily darkness rolling softly and slowly a purring rumble emanating from it, and seeming to surround her. Carefully she eyed where its face would be and saw how the smoky substance seemed to form a mask of her mate's features. It looked at her, with the glowing yellow fire of its eyes and a soft thrum issued forth, louder than the rumble but nothing compared to the angry shouts she had experienced before.

_K'diwa._

The threatening mist parted where a mouth would be, shifting to form opened lips and lowered jaw.

_T'Pol_, it was a deep sound like crumbling stone and crackling glaciers.

_Trip!_

It rumbled again, the purring sound that was at once frightening and soothing. She lifted a hand away from the light-child and tried to touch the thing's face and it jerked its head away, as if fearing the touch.

_Adun, can you sense me?_

_Koss._ It rumbled, the sound similar to the hiss and roll of a magma field.

_K'diwa?_

_In sleep. I am not here, I am not him._

T'Pol reached out again, longing to feel some semblance of her mate through touch. _I don't understand._

_I am not here, find him in sleep._ Its voice echoed through her mind as it stood to pull away from her.

_Father._

_K'diwa, please._ She begged, hand outstretched.

_I am not for you to touch, find him when he sleeps. _The thunderous roar followed its words as the dark vaporous form retreated into the interceding gray.

_Mother._

_Ashal-kam._

_Mother._

T'Pol felt herself slip from the unconscious mind into a sleep state as the voice-presence continued to speak the simple title to her. It was not a call for assistance or succor, merely a gentle acknowledgement of comfort due to her presence. In sleep she quickly found dreams, and was immediately comforted by what she felt. Her body, clad in the sarong, thing white blouse, and the bikini she had worn in Florida, pressed softly against the shorts-clad body of her sa-telsu, his muscular left arms wrapped around her as they reclined in the beach chair, softly shaded by the palms as the indistinct shape of their child laughed and squealed playing in the gulf coastal water, it was so human, why had she thought of the child as being so human? She realized it didn't matter to her, she would not care how human or how Vulcan the child was because it was _hers_ and it was _his_, and by dint of being so, it was perfect. At that moment, she experienced what had to be the most pronounced emotion she had up to this point savored. It was absolute, unconditional, unsullied love and in the strange semi-consciousness of dreams she decided she would fight however hard and however long to have it.

* * *

><p>Trip felt a mixture of apprehension and comfort at seeing the familiar face; it was nice to not be amid a sea of strange Vulcans, but if there was to be one familiar face he would have much preferred it not be this one. What did you say to a guy you beat the crap out of so you could marry the girl he was betrothed to since before you were born? He almost wished he was in a fire fight or was staring down a Warp Core breach, he'd at least know how to react in the situation. In High School he'd swept Julie Singer off her feet and had immediately come into conflict with Tommy Gelpie, the end result was open animosity on the part of young Thomas, but there would be no such cathartic definition of where he stood in reference to Koss, still he had to say something.<p>

"How's your arm and your..." Trip pointed to his own face and rolled his finger round in an outline of it's circumference.

"I have fully healed since the Kal-if-fee." Koss demurred.

Suvak opened his mouth to say something, but caught himself, waiting to see if there was further explanation forth coming as to ask the question in his mind would constitute a rather pronounced impropriety from the Vulcan perspective.

"It is gratifying that you did not kill me." Koss offered with an arched brow.

Trip couldn't stop the left corner of his mouth from climbing upwards ever so slightly, "Kinda goes without sayin'."

"We have medical personnel and professors here, they may be able to render aid to your comrade."

"First things, first, we need to get you all out of here and somewhere safe. First thing the Romulans are gonna do is head over here to see what went wrong." Trip shook his head, not liking it but it was the grim reality; Gaddson had signed on for this, the Vulcan civilians had not.

"It is possible that we will be able to seek shelter with the Zherka Spa'ra." Koss noted, "They make their sanctuary not more than seven kilometers from here."

"Who are the Zherka Spa'ra?"

Suvak grunted, "Translates literally to 'emotion eaters', they are a sect of Kolinahr hermits."

Trip's face showed immediate concern, "Well, that sounds...ominous."

Koss clamped his hands behind his back, "In actuality, the sect seeks to help Vulcans resolve destructive or unresolved emotions by taking them on themselves through a form of meditative meld."

Tucker shrugged with a contemplative sound, "Sure it's safe? Technically we'll be puttin' them in harm's way too. But then again, we've got air control back, so chances are we can evac y'all when we get our casevac in for Gaddson."

Koss's face once again shifted to indicated surprise, "You have broken through the dampening signal?"

"We turned it around on 'em. Right now we're disruptin' Romulan C and C, but we've managed to bring the Planetary Information Network back online."

"Then we have to defend this location at all costs, it is only logical." Koss insisted.

Trip wasn't sure why he couldn't feel more animosity coming from his former rival, in the same situation he would pretty much want to cut the other guy's head off. Even with his Vulcan reserve, he literally couldn't feel a modicum of anger or resentment coming from Koss except for what almost felt like a little of discomfort and inadequacy. T'Pol may have wanted him rather than Koss, and he had wanted T'Pol just as badly, but Trip was starting to get the ominous and uncomfortable feeling that Koss was actually a decent guy who was just thrust into a crappy situation all those months back.

"Won't be necessary, T'Les and I cracked the system code, there is literally no way for the system to come down until I input the kill code. I put a reactive virus in the security subroutines, if they try to rewrite the system or hijack the program, all they're goin' to get is a cascading series of program errors." Trip allowed a hint of predatory satisfaction on his face, "Its organic to the system now, they can scream at that console until they're green in the face, won't change a thing."

Koss started at the mention of T'Pol's mother, "T'Les, she is well then?"

"She was as of a few days ago." Trip nodded.

"That is gratifying to hear." He seemed to relax a little visibly, "And...T'Pol?"

Trip didn't want to set another banderilla into Koss but he need to establish the ground rules now. Koss' question was baited one, he wanted to know what his chances where, a good indicator that he did have some sort of feelings for her even if they were not reciprocated. He didn't want to destroy him, but at the same time he knew that hanging onto false hope was a killer, in the case of a Vulcan with the possible side effect of Plak-tow, literally so. "My ko-telsu is well, she is on _Enterprise._"

"So you fight for her home world, I am sure this is agreeable to her and an honor to her family." If Trip didn't know better he would swear that Koss was getting choked up.

"He fights for more than that, she is pregnant with their first born." Suvak added with all the tact and subtlety of an airstrike. Trip wasn't certain whether Suvak had just spent so much time around humans he found himself no longer capable of reading Vulcan moods or whether he just wanted to put the conversation to bed. The section 31 agent then turned to help ease Gaddson onto the collapsible stretcher Corporal Calvin had carried as part of his combat kit. Koss on the other hand looked away, Trip could see honest pain in his eyes. He would have to talk with him later, have an honest heart to heart about T'Pol. Even if it made Koss genuinely hate him, if he didn't already, it was necessary to help him finally get over her. Part of him ruminated on whether a feeling of pity would be construed as illogical.

"How many people do y'all have here?" Trip inquired, changing the subject.

"There are currently seventy eight of us."

"How many _were_ there?"

"Two hundred forty one before the Romulans arrived, the others were taken, where we were not informed." He cut eyes over at V'Las, "It is indeed unfortunate we were not aware of the Chancellor's relationship with the invaders, we might have all left the Academy walls to find safety to being with."

V'Las seemed to ignore the comments, just staring off into space, hands now bound by reinforced pull-ties from Rolston's combat kit. Trip took a step forward, snatching Koss' attention back, he did all he could in the situation, he tried to reassure his former-rival. "He had a lot of people fooled, all the way up the High Command."

Koss nodded, "Of course, it is illogical to reflect on the matter retrospectively."

"Go get your people together, and armed if possible, we're walkin' out in ten minutes."

Koss nodded, "Of course, Commander."

* * *

><p>Shelby didn't know how to take the news, it was like every time something went their way, it was just a prelude to some cyclopean disaster or piece of bad news. The counter-offensive had succeeded in pushing a division sized Romulan unit to the outskirts of the city and opened up room to maneuver around Camp Kelly, in the process of the break out they had inflected nearly sixteen hundred casualties, at least 1023 or which were confirmed kills. However, it had come at a cost, a horrible one; fifty six marines dead, of which forty three had been killed in action, the other thirteen succumbed to wounds. He had an additional one hundred seventeen injured, most of them would be ambulatory within 24 hours, but the missions had still been a logistical failure, at least as far as he was concerned and as available forces dictated.<p>

The upside had come when eighty six Vulcan commandos had managed to slip through the subterranean aqueducts and into his perimeter to provide additional support. It wasn't quite the additional company he had hoped for, but they had good intel and it let him free up two platoons of Weapons Company to set up a FOB two hundred fifty meters down MSR Viper from Camp Kelly. From this position they had managed to repulse three Romulan counter attacks after dusk and rack up a body count of around two hundred fifty by most estimates. The satisfaction at this victory was immediately dashed when they lost contact with lieutenant colonel Schills and his boys over at FOB Puma, it could only mean that their CP was hit and the commo tent was gone, or they had all been wiped out.

Now Tucker had worked some sort of miracle, and completely hijacked the Romulans' own system. Shelby was sitting pretty, he had good telemetry for his arty, he had signals for the Schiltron missile systems, and he was just about to bring the planetary defense batteries online. The first flights of F-381s from the starport were on station for ground support, whatever was going to happen next would have to be big and horrible to even everything out. The guns had been working non-stop for about five hours now, hundreds of fire missions had been called in, they were having to rotated between batteries to give the magnetic coils time to cool down between volleys.

To his left another mission was being called in, "Brahmin, this is Puma three, requesting fire mission, over."

The fire controller replied calmly, "Roger that Puma, send traffic, over."

"Roger Brahmin, grid coordinates zero three one one five eight, two rounds H E airburst, over."

"Copy that, Puma, time on target three one seconds, over."

Companies broke down to platoon sized units and were engaging the enemy with impunity for the past hour. The Marines would start contact with designated marksman about eight hundred to five hundred meters out, when the enemy tried to move in as a reaction force, the individual platoon would pin them with small arms fire then call back for arty to do a number on them. It was how he had initially planned to fight the engagement to begin with, and now that the dampening field was shot to hell, is boys were getting some. Payback, revenge, righteous ass-kick, get some marines, oorah! According to Sub-Commander V'Til, the head of the Vulcan contingent that had just shown up he had pockets of 7 to 21 Commandos littered around the city on just about every other block to act as harassment and interdiction elements, with planetary communications restored he could start rounding them up into super-units to begin flanking enemy contact groups and then link up with the Marines to provide support. So far V'Til's men had repelled five small unit actions against the main gate and the FOB on MSR Viper.

V'Til definitely had his shit squared away, and his boys were hard fighters if not hard chargers, and with the promise of more Vulcan commando sections drifting into Kelly, Shelby could loose the rest of weapons company and another platoon from A company to continue bringing the fight to the Romulans. The Vulcan commander in question looked to be an old man; face heavily lined and hair that had been grey for a long time, but he still had the eyes of a perfectly seasoned combat commander and there was a spring in his step. Shelby saw in him, his opposite number, the Vulcan version of himself. As much as Shelby had been pining for another company of at least 200, he wouldn't trade the 86 Vulcans he had now for a company of less experienced troops, they were as tenacious as a pit-bull and fought almost as good as a seasoned Marine rifleman. The fact they only need a fourth as much food, a fifth of the water, and a third of the sleep as his boys made them that much more of an asset. Now all that was left to do was wait for the MCS relief contingent to arrive, it had already been eight days now, but the odds were looking very good now that they would be able to hold out for at least another twenty if need be.

Shelby turned to find his aide, 1LT Rich Gayle when the round hit. The cry of "incoming" had registered in his ear the same second he felt the slap against his body as if some titanous being of heat and flame had decided to slap him off the face of the planet. The last thought to go through his head before blackness took him was to realize he hadn't sent off the letter to Grace Reichauer.

* * *

><p>"Commander Tucker..." Trip turned and noticed Koss approaching alone, towards the mouth of the cave complex in which the Zherka Spa'ra were located along with some thirty other Vulcans. From the outside it would have been all but unrecognizable as anything other than a naturally occurring terrain feature, but once in the mouth of the cave one could easily see that sentient hands had rendered the stone for their own purpose. The holy men themselves had seemed dour and reserved, but he expected nothing less from Kolinahr masters. A young Vulcan female who served as one of their attendants further explained that their mandate as part of a code almost as old as Surak, was to take dangerous emotions into themselves to rid others of suffering. They then had to live with these emotions, some of the oldest of their number was literally infirmed from all the negative emotions that served to tax them physically while their minds held the passions in check.<p>

Something about the young woman had bothered Sergeant Cummings intensely, he could almost smell the agitation coming off the NCO. He had planned on asking him about it immediately if he had not been immediately side-tracked by Gaddson's condition. It was a certainty now, the Section 31 operator was dying, a casevac would likely just finish the job faster, as it was now he wasn't in pain so it seemed appropriate to let him go in the peace and quiet of the cave/compound. His blood was heavily contaminated with toxins from the wound, residual radiation, and necrotizing tissue. He was still not in any pain, which was a sure sign of how badly injured he was, his nerves had ceased to bother sending the signals. There was something about him that was unnaturally calm, serenely accepting of his fate. When asked if he wanted to risk taking the casevac out he had calmly whispered there was no reason to waste the space. Since their arrival he had Suvak at his side while they relayed the pertinent information that the Vulcan would need as head SID operator on planet after his passing. Trip also suspected that he wanted to spend his last waking moments with a friend as well. Dying alone was the worst way to go, if he could at least have a comrade in arms and friend with him, it made the slow crawl to final cessation less frightening and lonely.

"What can I do for you Koss?" Trip sighed slightly, fighting exhaustion and a sudden ominous feeling that the nature of the conversation would be an unpleasant one.

"Commander, I must know as this is something that has tormented me for many months now. Do you love T'Pol, Commander?"

"I do, more than I think I've ever loved anyone or anything."

Koss nodded, "Then it is acceptable to me that events transpired as they did."

Trip forced himself to ask the same of Koss, "Do you love her Koss?"

"The correct Vulcan response would be that I do not experience love, but that is merely a lie our people tell ourselves and outsiders to reinforce the perception of being without emotion. The truth is I did feel a strong affection for T'Pol. I am not certain if it was love or infatuation, but it certainly felt like the former." The Vulcan clamped his hands behind his back and stared out from the mouth of the cave at the same desert hat Tucker had been viewing, "I have studied our marriage traditions for many years, the term love has been eschewed in our culture and writings, but it is understood that love is a component of our bonding. I was never bonded to T'Pol in any capacity, but I felt a strong desire to have achieved such a bond. Without ever adequately knowing her, I suspect it would have been premature on my part to assume there would have been a love between us."

"She was then and still is very emotional. It woulda been very hard on you."

Koss lowered his chin for a moment in a cursory nod, "I truly believe that to be true now."

"There is someone out there for you, gotta believe that." Trip squeezed his eyes shut a moment to fight a wave of fatigue off.

"There is an unattached female I experience a fondness for. It is a recent occurrence since beginning my tenure with the Science Academy." Koss declared honestly, "I understood after the Kal-if-fee that there was no longer a situation where-in my bond with T'Pol could be completed. I knew of the Zherka Spa'ra because I was forced to consult them after my defeat."

Trip opened his mouth but was immediately cut off by Koss who continued, "Do not apologize, the Kal-if-fee is the Vulcan way. She chose you with good reason, your pairing is only logical. Consulting the Zherka Spa'ra has allowed me to take full advantage of the gift you gave me, Commander."

"What gift?" Trip was flabbergasted by this latest statement, "I damn near beat you to death and stole your bride!"

"But you stopped, you could have killed me easily, Commander. The fact you let me live and pleaded that the battle be concluded so that I may live was more charitable than I would have been if the situations had been reversed."

"Well, that's just the rules, I come into your backyard and pick a fight, it only makes sense you'd make sure I couldn't do it again."

"That is a rather colorful analogy." Koss cocked a brow upward, amusement or confusion, it was difficult to tell.

"Yeah, well, that's one of the few things I'm really good at."

"And assaulting science institutions occupied by Romulans it would seem."

Trip arched a brow, beginning to wonder if it was a Vulcan stress reaction or some weird pheromone he gave off, "Koss, did you just make a joke?"

"Why? Was something I said humorous?"

Before Tucker can say anything further an audibly cleared throat forces him to turn. Rolston's carriage suggested exhaustion and more than a bit of pessimism. Tucker was starting to wonder if his entire command wasn't coming apart at the seams; Cummings had some problem with the Vulcan woman who had greeted them, Suvak was coming unglued over what happened to Gaddson but in a subtle Vulcan way, and now Rolston looked like he had just received news that Christmas had been cancelled and someone killed his puppy.

"Commander, Black flag just contacted us...Colonel Shelby..." He swallowed past a sudden dryness in his mouth and throat, "Sir, Colonel Shelby has been critically injured by a plasma mortar...they're not sure if he's going to make it. You are now the ranking MCS officer in the Shi'kahr operations theatre."

Trip stood still a moment, he hadn't just heard that right, it was his mind playing tricks on him. Maybe someone had put Rolston up to playing a practical joke, that had to be it, it was a joke. Not a very funny one, as a matter of fact it was in horrible taste and he was going to see to it that whoever put him up to it got NJPed to hell and gone. He was going to turn into the biggest lifer the person in question had ever seen, the uber-lifer; overlord of regulations, high priest of uniform standards, grand caliph of the chain of command and inter-service discipline. But damn it Rolston wasn't selling it better than any practical joke he had ever seen. As a matter of fact, the Marine looked almost like someone had replaced his blood with EPS coolant before sending him on the fool's errand.

"You're jokin' right? Someone put you up to this...it was Weller wasn't it?"

"Sir...Black flag has got an evac bird being diverted to these coordinates now ETA forty five minutes, you are needed in Shi'kahr to assume control of macvee forces in theatre." Rolston declared with a sort of emotional amputation that went hand in hand with shock.

Tucker closed his eyes, holding up a single index finger, bidding silence. Without fanfare he walked out of the cave mouth and into the desert, clamping his hands into tight fists as he fought back the overwhelming urge to scream, to bellow at something or someone. He took a series of deep breaths, trying to find some spot of Zen where he could focus on internal serenity but the rock-garden and waterfalls all seemed to be closed for renovation or because someone was holding a team-building business conference at them on this particular day. What did he know about running a Marine garrison? To hell with that, what did he know about running a Marine Garrison in the middle of a warzone surrounded by hostiles on all sides without fleet support of an immediate guarantee there-of? He wanted to hit something, tear it in half, kick it then spit on what was left, if this were _Enterprise_ a wall panel could be the tragic proxy he could vent his rage on, out here there was nothing. His hand went to the side arm instinctively and snatched it from the holster, holding it out at the sand hand shaking just a little as he did. He wanted to pull the trigger, just to destroy something, anything, but there would be no satisfaction in emptying a clip into the sand, no catharsis from wasting eight precious rounds on a sea of silica. He raised the weapon, the barrel pointed skyward, hand next to his face as he worked down the wave of stress and anger.

Trip turned and walked back into the cave, when he spoke his voice was calm and measured despite his display of fury a moment before. "Rolston, get everyone to square their stuff away, and call macvee, tell them to divert the evac one kilometer west of our position, I don't wanna tip off any hostiles that might be in the area. Understood?"

"Aye, sir."

Tucker turned back to the Vulcan, "Koss, you think your people'll be alright here for a while?"

"It is reasonable to believe we will manage, Commander. I must once again extend my appreciation for your assistance at the academy."

Trip shrugged fighting a sheepish grin, he was not amused, but the stress of the situation was causing strange emotional reactions, "It was the least I could do. Now let me go break the news to Gaddson-" he paused abruptly, suddenly remembering that the Section 31 agent could measure his remaining lifespan in minutes or hours at this point.

* * *

><p>"T'Nal..."<p>

The Vulcan woman turned, one of the Marines approached, his face looking worn and tired, some strange recognition on his face. How had he known her name, she was certain she had never told them? Slowly he lifted the helmet from off his head, and she saw the short dusty brown hair, the shape of his ears, and the look in his eyes. The memory of him brought back all the emotions the Zherka Spa'ra masters had purged her of over the last two years. She was far more indebted to the sages than she usually realized. In moments of quiet introspection she would contemplate her fate and what would have become of her if not for these ascetics she would certainly be dead either by some creature or her own hands. But they had never taken the memories away from her, in their rare moments when they would speak to her they would explain that Vulcans were not meant to purge emotions, only control them. It was strange to hear the words coming from Kolinahr masters, but perhaps that is why their sect was expunged by the established Monasteries. The Zherka Spa'ra acknowledged that what they did was not normal for Vulcans and a road that few should aspire too, therefore they would take the burden of uncontrollable emotions onto themselves to spare other Vulcans from the numbness of Kolinahr.

"Bryan..." She gasped the words, suddenly recognizing the face of her former human lover, the man who had at once had ruined her life and had his own ruined. No, it was not fair to claim he had ruined her life, she had wanted him as badly as he had wanted her. She had lured him back to her home, wanting the sensation and pleasure he could give her. She should have left Vulcan, gone to Earth so she could be with him, but she had been a coward, and in her cowardice she had been sent to endure Kolinahr.

When she had fled from the Monastery, she was certain she would die soon, but the Zherka Spa'ra had found her and took her in to be their attendant and to have the turmoil of her mind removed.

"I thought I would never see you again." He said evenly, the pain in his eyes however, stung as if he had struck her.

"You were not meant to." She answered softly.

"I'm just glad you're alright." Cummings countered, his voice silken by rife with emotion. The way she remembered his speech being during their mutual seduction of each other. He had spent months courting her, from where she worked as a secretary in the MAC-V Compliance and Communication Office. She remembered finding him agreeable, strong and sturdy with an aura of confidence and professionalism. Under all the Marine polish he was tender, affectionate, and suitably constrained; he had never pressured her for physical intimacy and had always allowed her respectable space. She would dare to say that she had thought him to be suitable to be her mate.

"Sergeant Cummings, it was not my intention that we should ever come into contact with one another again." She tried desperately to hide the confusion rending her thoughts and logic.

"I know, I'm sorry...I'm just..." He sighed, a sad ragged sound, "It's just really good to see you one last time." He turned and began to walk away.

"Wait, Bryan." She walked over to him, entering his personal space and, by proxy, allowing him into hers, "It is agreeable to see you again. It would also be agreeable if when this invasion has been quashed that we see one another again. We have things unfinished between us."

Cummings allowed a bittersweet smile, an expression that made her hurt inside and feel another strong sense of longing for his human. "That would be nice."

* * *

><p>Suvak sat quietly next to the corpse of his superior, fellow operations agent, comrade in arms, and friend. To the very last he had been utterly professional, not once overtaken by emotions or the deeply introspective folly that precedes death. Gaddson had focused on ensuring that everything Suvak might need to know was relayed to him and that he would have all in the information at his disposal to continue operating as the senior Section 31 Operations Officer for Vulcan. The last words that had left the human's mouth, as if he saw his own death looming just ahead were, "Suvak, is has been an honor and a privilege to serve with you, and I'm proud to call you my friend." He went silent after that, and a few moments later took one last halting breath as his body tried desperately to get more oxygen to his dying brain. In the fifteen intervening minutes he had not be able to move, not been able to say anything, instead he was transfixed by a strange series of mental processes that were as illogical as they were irreconcilable.<p>

When Tucker appeared in the small room, carved from out of the rock of the cave, Suvak had reported the incident with coldly Vulcan precision. "Commander Tucker, mister Gaddson expired approximately fifteen minutes ago, I am acting section chief for SID section thirty one on Vulcan."

Tucker shook his head slowly, "He was a good man."

Suvak nodded, "He was, an excellent agent, honest, loyal, efficient..." he knew there was a human criterion that surpassed perhaps all of that, "and he was my friend. Commander, I am experiencing mental processes that I cannot reconcile, it is rather confusing and alarming."

"That's called sorrow...even a Vulcan hurts when they lose a friend."

"I do not suppose there is any logic in attempting to debate that." He gathered his rifle but remained seated, as if he suddenly found himself without sufficient energy to rise.

"It's gonna be hard, and its gonna get worse before it gets better, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want you mopin' around while there's still a war to be won." Trip's words were hard, unforgiving, like mild acid in an open wound; it intensified the pain but helped clean the infectious self-pity away.

"That is logical, there will be time to remember the dead after the fact." Suvak stood, he was surprised at the effort it took. It was a simple task, one that was rudimentary, almost unconscious, yet he found it a strain; a manifestation of emotion. It was only fitting that having spent as much time among humans as he had, as much as he adulated in their martial tradition which itself had as many ribbons of emotionality running through it as the rest of their culture, that it made sense that his control over those illogical processes of neurochemistry would be impaired. "I am now honor bound to avenge him and ensure his premature passing is not in vain."

Trip watched while Suvak lifted Gaddson's rifle, slinging his own and making the fallen covert warrior's weapon as his own. It was symbolic in a way most Vulcans would not understand and would completely overlook, but he felt that Suvak understood the gravity of what he had done.

"We have transport inbound to take us to Camp Kelly, Colonel Shelby was critically injured, they've put me in charge of the operations theatre. I'm sure you've got your own objectives, but we can give you a ride back to Shi'kahr."

Suvak contemplated this for a moment, then lowered his head, "I believe my mandate would be better served continuing harassment and interdiction of Romulan forces. They will undoubtedly send forces back to the Science Academy to determine what transpired there, I will ensure those forces are hampered."

"Sounds an awful lot like a suicide mission." Trip grunted, his face marred by a spreading grimace.

"It is not my intention to engage them in combat, but I can disrupt their efforts to enter the facility and access the information network. It would be illogical for me to throw my life away when I have a mandate to ensure the continuity of SID operations on Vulcan." Suvak's face softened into what would almost be a smirk, barely perceptible to anyone not accustomed to the hyper-subtlety of Vulcan emotiveness, "I also promised him I would deliver a message to his family in fiancé, such an act would be complicated by my untimely death."

"Well, mister Suvak, it has been a privilege to fight alongside you." Trip raised his hand in the split fingered Ta'al. "Peace and long life."

The Vulcan extended his hand, opened to accept a handshake in the human tradition. Trip accepted the grasp, surprised by the firmness, it had character and complexity and seemed decidedly human, "Give them hell, Commander."

* * *

><p>Soval paced in front of Minister T'Pau, his movements frustrated and showing a high degree of emotionality. T'Pau would have found it distasteful were it not for the fact that his anger was logical. Her own curiosity and skepticism had caused this entire incident to come to pass, and as the consequences of her act had come to fruition she found herself more in doubt of her faculties than Soval ever could. All she had found in the mind meld was a form of self-doubt that was more pronounced than any sensation she had ever experienced. How much of her actions had been out of genuine concern and how much of it was her desire to know what it was to be mated to a human. There was legitimate reason to wonder, the recognition of the union of T'Pol and Charles Tucker III would open the way for similar relationships to form between their people. If a Vulcan could love a human and a human a Vulcan, then there was logic in allowing such relationships to form. The offspring acting as codification of the relationship between their respective peoples and further opening the door for deeper forms of alliance between their two peoples.<p>

The sensations and memories of the events seen through the meld had tortured her for days now. Her own memories of Colonel Shelby's smell, the feel of his body, even clad in the implements of war, against hers brought back the sensation of T'Pol and Tucker's coupling. She was likely decades from her first Pon Farr, but she still felt herself wanting the sensation of skin on hers, heated lips touching her, hands touching in ways she was unfamiliar with. How illogical it was, it was frivolous, emotional, not-Vulcan. It defied her Kolinahr training, flaunted it, held it up before her and mocked it, ridiculing its failure to contain and defeat these overwhelming desires that plagued her sleep and scourged her attempts at meditation.

"Your anger is logical, Ambassador Soval." T'Pau finally said.

"Are you implying that I am having an emotional reaction?" His voice was even, but the anger slightly tinted the words.

"You are, Ambassador. You are angry at what I have done to T'Pol, and you are justifiably so. I will make no attempt to excuse my lack of judgment. If you feel it is judicious to reveal my actions to the remainder of the High Command and Council, I will accept full responsibility for my actions."

Soval clapped his hands behind his back, his robes rustling indignantly at the violent speed at which he did so, "It is fortunate that T'Pol did not perceive you as an imminent threat to her offspring or her mate, otherwise it is possible that this conversation would not be occuring."

T'Pau felt a slight shiver at the thought of T'Pol in a bond-rage. The likelihood she could have bested the elder Vulcan in combat was remote, and T'Pol would have certainly killed her if she could not be quickly contained. Furthermore, in attempting to defend herself or in the process of containing a female Vulcan fighting for her offspring and mate, it was possible that the offspring would have spontaneously aborted. The trauma of losing the offspring, the pain it would cause her mate, and the resultant sympathetic trauma would likely destroy her entirely. "It is, indeed, a fortunate occurrence. I will accept any chastisement or punitive action you deign fit, Ambassador."

"Then you will become humanity's voice on the Command Council. The humans, their government, and MCS seek a full integration between the peoples of the immediate galactic community. Their goal of a United Federation would include our people in addition to the Andorians, Rigellians, and Tellarites. You will put forth the proposal after the immediate threat of the Romulans has been dealt with."

T'Pau bowed her head, "It shall be done, Ambassador. I am hopeful that the dishonor of my actions can be rectified by ensuring a lasting relationship among our people and theirs."

A United Federation would dictate that the High Command would no longer be needed. A more simplified civic or municipal organization could see to the administration of Vulcan with the broader political, military, and scientific concerns of her people falling under the aegis of the Federation Administrative and Governmental entity. Perhaps, then, she would find herself in a position to approach Colonel Shelby. He was an agreeable being, and she found herself strangely secure when around him, she was relatively certain that there would never be a situation where-in they would form a mate bond, but his companionship until which point Pon-farr dictated she mate would be agreeable.

**[! Author's Note !] I just realized that the captain of the _Tu'sal_ was also named Suvak. In this case we can just assume that Suvak is sort of like John or James for Vulcans and there are two people with the same name. The Captain of the _Tu'sal_ should not figure into the story very much from here-on-out to help alleviate confusion.**


	15. Chapter 15

"Word is Hernandez is having to lay down the law over on Columbia." Reed mumbled between bites, as if he was privy to some treasonous conspiracy. Thirty eight hours out from Vulcan a kind of nervous tension had gripped the ships of Task Force: Tonbogiri and Task Force: Gungnir, nobody could sleep, no one could sit still, and tempers were wont to flare at the most inopportune of times. Marines were posted at sensitive points throughout the ship, and they had been on tactical alert since 0310 this morning. Apparently _Columbia_ was having an even worse time of it given the fact that Erika Hernandez was being viewed as a stranger and interloper, an unwanted presence that had served to usurp their captain's position and they were chafing under her command. As much as Reed despised a lack of discipline during a cruise or operation, he understood the idea of a sudden change in the "family" that was a ship's crew. He was relatively certain he would have been resistant to Captain Archer's replacement if such a situation should occur.

Still, he had to believe that everything would work out in the end; Hernandez was nothing if she wasn't stern, but she was also perhaps the most fair senior officer he had served under. She never did anything arbitrarily and when she meted out punishment it was a certainty that it was judiciously and deservingly applied. Reed was also relatively sure that if someone was to ever truly get under her skin, they would have a towering unholy hell to pay. Sato gingerly picked a shaved-thin piece of shallot from the top of her an sung tang myun with the impersonally easy to clean plastic chop sticks and with a quick flip of her wrist, sent the piece of oniony vegetable into her mouth and chewed with slowly reflective precision. The mood at "their" table had taken on a dour tone as even Travis seemed incapable of levity; the mood was painfully serious in a way things had been during the Xindi campaign a little more than eight months before, except there was almost a palpable dread over the fact that one of their own had been unceremoniously placed right in the middle of it in a decidedly disadvantageous way.

"I wonder what commander Tucker would think about all that crap that went on? We should have been at Vulcan by now." Mayweather bemoaned in that quiet plummeting way he did when something was significantly execrable to rend that contagiously joyful optimism from him.

Hoshi noted T'Pol entering the mess hall and quietly nudged the clearly maudlin Travis, catching Reed's eyes in the process and gesturing with her head towards the Vulcan Science officer who was receiving her Phlox-Special salad from a steward. Reed turned and stole a quick glance as did Mayweather before turning back to Sato and giving her an inquisitive look. Hoshi shook her head and muttered two words, "Broken arrow."

Hoshi didn't know how, but T'Pol was damaged; a nuclear accident in the process of happening or ex post facto, she was being covered over by a veneer of quiet and suitably detached Vulcan stoicism but Hoshi could almost taste it in the air when she was near. The two other officers immediately affected a composed affability, as if neither was honestly as concerned as they had clearly been a few moments before. T'Pol would, of course, sit with them; it provided a layer of insulation against the questioning of the crew or misbegotten congratulations over the impending baby or the less than subtle resentment on the part of a few members of the female crew who had, apparently, held out hopes they would eventually lay claim to the magnificent Charles "sexual vanilla" Tucker. His stock had shot up considerably after the news of his daring 31 kilometer sub-sonic free-fall parachute insertion and cracking of the "impenetrable" Romulan Jamming system to valiantly save the Vulcan High Command and be left behind to fight his way through hordes of enemies. It screamed Errol Flynn or Rudolph Valentino or one of a litany of ancient actors whose characterizations were as dashing and valiant as much as they were dripping with unvarnished sex-appeal. Hoshi felt a little good-natured jealousy towards T'Pol herself; not that she wanted Trip, he was not her type, but the idea of a guy like that set her all a-quiver and her private mental fantasy about her ideal dashing hero had served to provide some pleasurable distraction when alone in her cabin with nothing to do but read, sleep, or indulge in a little self-regulatory masturbation.

She met T'Pol's eyes and with a confirmatory expression indicated that she was welcome to join them. There was an unspoken understanding that she was always welcome to sit with them, but T'Pol was ever one for propriety and would invariably seek confirmation that her presence was welcome before actually approaching the table. It was a needless ritual, they had never hesitated to grant her permission to sit in their little group before, nor had they ever behaved in an uncomfortable or hesitating fashion, rising to leave shortly after or letting the table fall into needless silence. T'Pol sat and for the first time, no one knew exactly what to say, what sort of banter to engage in. If Hoshi's perceptions were correct, they could not continue on the painful line of conversation they had engaged in before her arrival. T'Pol, mercifully, broke the silence first, removing the de facto ban on speech as if breaking out a monastery of Strict Observance Cistercians.

"Lieutenant Reed, upon reviewing your sensor logs during the engagement over Vulcan I believe I can adequately detect Romulan vessel concentrations and positions relative to the planet with acceptable accuracy up to ten minutes before exiting warp."

Reed looked at Hoshi skeptically for a moment, not sure what she had seen as out of place or as a sign of something wrong, she seemed perfectly normal , the regular old T'Pol, but he had to trust Hoshi's judgment. Hoshi could always tell these things, could sense them, sniff them out, could feel them like a change of pressure in the room when all the life rushed out to fill in the hole where someone was standing or when the pressure tripled when someone was about to explode. If she could look at you for just a minute, when you thought nobody could see you and the shields went down she could find all the cracks where the life was leaking out. She was almost the de facto counselor for the ship, the shaman-head-shrink who in perfect duality with Phlox as the confessor-pill-pusher managed to kiss all the psychic wounds and make them better.

"That's excellent sub-commander, it should make our deployment of ships once we enter system more expedient."

T'Pol went back to idly picking through her salad, spearing a piece of paper-thin beef along with a section of grape tomato and a leaf of arugula. She eyed the selection on her fork, as if momentarily contemplating the flavor it would produce or, more likely, its nutritional content before pushing it daintily past her lips and masticating with a distinctly Vulcan dignity.

Hoshi cut eyes over to the pilot/navigator who gave a subtle nod, he sensed it too, perhaps if only because she had brought it to his attention.

"T'Pol, how is the baby?" It was a spit-ball attempt, but she was certain that whatever was bothering her had something to do with it.

The Vulcan paused, having finished chewing and swallowed, her halting reaction...looking for an appropriate response was confirmation enough for Hoshi, something was wrong with the pregnancy.

"I experienced an immune system response shortly after implantation, it misconstrued the human DNA as an attack."

Hoshi, Malcolm, and Travis's faces all shifted into a mask of despair and terror, had she lost the baby? It was almost too cruel to even contemplate it, they were a family, it was almost a much their baby as it was Trip and T'Pol's, it was a joy they all felt. If something had happened and snatched that joy away... It was a doubly bad omen; the baby was supposed to be Trip's raison d'être, if it was gone did this foreshadow his death, or did it mean that it had died in the metaphysical balancing of the equation in the stead of its father? But maybe there were jumping to conclusions, they had to pry, intrude, dig in deeper and find out the answers to perhaps stay the clawing hand of despair.

"Is the baby alright?" Travis asked.

"Doctor Phlox saw no indication that my immune response had attacked the embryo. He utilized an immunosuppressant to cease the defense response. Until the embryo has developed further, it will be impossible to determine whether there was any permanent damage or not." She kept her voice even, her face matter-of-fact and stolid, but her hand shook a little as she spoke the words.

"T'Pol, I am so sorry this happened." Hoshi said quietly, her nearly boundless capacity for empathy pouring into every word.

"The fault is my own, if I had been adequately prepared for the pregnancy I would have already considered and made concessions for the possibility."

They cut eyes at one another, as the oblivious Vulcan dug back into her salad, she had just let a major little factum slip. An unforeseen pregnancy meant one thing and one thing only, perhaps Vulcans were much more passionate than they let on.

"You mean you had not intended to become pregnant?" Hoshi queried with faux-innocence.

"I did not consciously make the decision, it was perhaps-" T'Pol caught herself, flushing with a subtle virdis wash to her bronze skin, she had said to much.

"Oh?" Hoshi lilted as the accepted spokes-person for the trio of MCS officers.

T'Pol set down her fork, realizing the logical course of action was to avoid the persistent prodding of humans' limitless capacity for curiosity by revealing certain key facts. Her personal embarrassment over the breach of her privacy now would be limited if she revealed certain bits of information now rather than being caught in elaborate traps or letting bits inadvertently slip later on. Besides, as a cultural representative of her people it was perhaps beneficial to dispel some popularly held misconceptions that had been perpetrated on their closest allies.

"Hypothetically speaking, Vulcans do experience strong desires for affection from their mates. As time progresses, the nature of this desire alters from a need for physicality or physical closeness and proximity to a form of subtle and persistent telepathy." She paused a moment, considering how to be word the next part, "A Vulcans desire for his or her mate can often involved a great deal of...physical components."

"So what you're saying is you have a healthy sex drive." Hoshi spoke low, but cocked an amused brow.

"I am saying that Vulcans can have a healthy sex drive, particularly if the mate is...agreeable in that regard."

Malcolm stepped in on the phone, tongue in cheek, "And are you saying Trip is agreeable in that regard?"

T'Pol just cocked a brow, head tilted the side as if remembering something, a little amusement working its way into the blush. "I find it difficult to discern why the nature of the sexual component of my relationship with Commander Tucker is of such interest."

"We're living vicariously." Hoshi replied with surprising frankness.

"It was my understanding that humans had developed multiple media whereby one could do the exact same." T'Pol countered archly, gently lifting her left eyebrow.

"It's different when you know the people involved, it becomes more intimate, special, you no longer have to suspend disbelief and the idea that people you care about are finding something special in one another is just..." Hoshi seemed to search for the correct word, "deliciously fun."

"Besides, none of the Vulcan love slave vids or novels ever have a believable Vulcan." Travis tossed in with what was questionable decorum.

Reed stifled a snicker, trying hard not to break into peals of laughter . Mayweather was a good kid, and a good friend, but there were times when his capacity for absolute unfailing honesty got him into trouble, now was a perfect case. T'Pol's Vulcan inscrutability just compounded the humor in the strange expression she was now wearing. Travis just grinned with slight embarrassment, lowering his head slightly. T'Pol lowered her eyes, her cheeks and throat showing her own patina of embarrassment.

"Perhaps I should correct some of the errors in said fiction to provide an accurate revision."

Hoshi cut eyes over at Malcolm who was turning quite red, his hand clamped hard over his mouth as his shoulders shook in halting spasms.

"We just want to know you're happy and alright, T'Pol." Hoshi clarified, "You're one of the Enterprise family and if Trip wasn't treating you right and making you happy we'd have to lay an ass beating on him."

"Trip is a very agreeable husband if perhaps occasionally quite frustrating from the Vulcan perspective. And I must note, as his mate I would be bound to help defend him if there was any attempt to accost him." She noted with a bit of amusement.

* * *

><p>"The crazy thing is...they don't make a sound. They don't shout, they don't scream, I think the most I heard was one of them moaned a little because they decided to kill him slow..."<p>

Trip looked down at the young Marine, he was walking glass, ready to shatter into a million violent pieces at any moment, each shard cutting, stabbing, mutilating. An unfocused, omni-directional, volatile fuck-you that would flatten the buildings if it let him get his hands on one of them. He was a human cannon-ball, a walking, talking demolition charge just looking for a knot of Romulans to go off in. The fact that he had been cognizant enough follow the Vulcan commandos and not go nuclear-option at the sight of the Romulan patrols was either a testament to his situational discipline or to the Vulcan powers of persuasion.

"There was this one woman...and I dunno what she did, but there was like three of the big ones, and they were..." He choked, coughing a little as he tried to fight back the retching at the thought of what had been done to her, "And she didn't make a sound, just lay there, starin' off into oblivion while they did it." His face was a million colors at once, lips white, cheeks orange, forehead red with big blue veins sticking out, everything else seemed a sickly jaundiced shade except for the black brown and almost green color of the bruise on his jaw. He looked like an explosion corpse, all the insides pooling near the surface as everything on the inside is mixed into an indefinable puree of guts, fluids, and offal.

"I did for those fuckers though...I did 'em good..." He placed a hand over the thigh pocket on his MCUU pants, Trip noticed the strange discoloration there and caught a whiff of putrescence. Sergeant Cummings gently lifted the Marine's hand away and reached into the pocket, pulling out three decaying hairless patches of scalp skin, even more mottled and pale looking now that putrefaction had set in.

The Marine looked up, he couldn't have been more than twenty one if he was a day, his eyes rimmed with read and flecks of yellow rheum, the lids blackened by lack of sleep, leaked blood like a big ugly bruise. At this moment what would normally be a youthful face looked old in ways that only old testament patriarchs were. He was fighting back big, burning frustrated tears; tears at not being able to kill all of the Romulans, tears at being the one that survived, tears at not going down with the rest of Reichauer's section and then having to spend the last six days seeing atrocity after atrocity and being impotent to do anything about it.

"Why don't they scream, sir? Why don't they yell or somethin'?"

Trip shook his head, his brow furrowed and lips frozen in a sad helpless frown, "I dunno, son. I dunno. It's just the way Vulcans are, it's pride, integrity, discipline. It's what makes 'em better than the Romulans."

The young Marine tried to pull himself up, fighting a spine that wanted to bend under the weight of what he had experienced and the lack of sleep and food. "Sir, I'd like to go out with one of the platoons, I'm still ready to fight, sir."

Trip nodded at one of the corpsmen, then turned his eyes back to the post-traumatic stress ridden youth, "You need some shut-eye first, Marine. There'll be plenty of time to get your back into it, right now you need some rest."

His shoulders sagged, too exhausted to argue and the corpsman approached with a hypo-spray in hand containing a judiciously sized dose of Clonazepam. "This'll help you sleep."

The Marine accepted the drugs, as they were injected into his neck. In most situations he would have likely balked at being shot full of anything, he was the type that would normally think acting like he was too tough to be doped was what was expected of him, but his reserves were shot and gone and if he couldn't figure out a way to reconcile what he experienced, his life as a Marine was likely over. He was symptomatic of the uniquely battlefield walking dead. There was a chance he would never feel again, never love or feel the safety of friends or family, it was a time-delay casualty, KIA just waiting for the day ten, twenty, one hundred years down the line when he finally stopped his forward movement and fell over. It would be out of Graves and Registration's hands by that point, and he'd end up a generic obituary that wouldn't ever acknowledge that he had, in fact, died on Vulcan, June nineteenth, anno domini twenty one fifty four.

One of the Vulcan commandos approached Tucker as the corpsman helped the shattered boy-man back to the barracks area where he could find a bunk to collapse in. The Vulcan looked not much better for wear, a large green edged cut across his forehead and face smudged with dirt and soot, his countenance grim even by Vulcan standards. "When we found him, he was attempting cardio pulmonary resuscitation on a dead child. His record should note his discipline in the face of the trauma he suffered during our efforts to reach Camp Kelly."

"That means a lot," Trip nodded, "I'm sure you guys saw some horrible things too."

"What is happening in Shi'kahr is trying even on Vulcans, Commander. Logic fails in some situations."

Tucker shook his head, it was worse than he had ever expected, the brutality of the Romulans was staggering. "I'm sure you folks could use some rest too, we have cots and bunks available, and I think they've got hot food in the mess hall."

"Respectfully, Commander, we would prefer to report in to Sub-commander V'Til and receive any further instructions regarding our unit disposition."

Trip nodded, "Alright, I understand. We can radio over if you'd like, or you can reach him through the main gate. We have the area between Camp Kelly and the FOB, secured, but if you plan on walkin' out, you might want to hot-foot it, there is still nominal fire comin' in from Romulan positions flankin' MSR Viper."

The Vulcans looked between each other, a series of perfunctory facial gestures the only communication, the leader with the cut on the forehead turned back, "Radioing ahead to sub-commander V'Til would be the more agreeable option."

"There is no need, you may report to me directly."

Tucker turned to see the grey haired Vulcan approach, clad partially in appropriated Marine equipment, a Vulcan particle rifle hung from a sling across his chest. He wore a harsh expression, eyeing Tucker carefully, as if trying to assess the replacement for Colonel Shelby. Trip raised his hand, producing the Ta'al. "Peace and long life, sub-commander."

V'Til cocked a brow and made a contemplative sound, "Hmmm...so you are replacing Colonel Shelby? How is it that I have not seen you at the garrison?"

"Commander Charles Tucker, I'm actually from the CGX zero one, USS Enterprise. I parachuted into Shi'kahr to disable the dampening network so we could beam out the High Command."

"So you are a senior command officer?"

"No, sir, I'm actually an engineer."

"So you are _the_ Commander Tucker. I had expected someone with more...experience."

"And by experience you mean older, correct?" Trip didn't hold his tongue.

"I do not believe age would be the criterion."

"With all respect, sub-commander, I fought in every major engagement of the forty seven war, and was at the vanguard of the Xindi campaign, I've got plenty of experience with warfare." He realized what he had to do, he had to establish a pecking order, his mouth was going to have to do the posturing because demurely laying out credentials wasn't going to do it, "May I inquire how many active ground engagements you have fought in, sub-commander?"

"I must defer to your experience, Commander Tucker." The Vulcan seemed rather abashed, which was unexpected, Trip was readying himself to have to shout the older man down if need be. He may be a lot of things, but a neophyte was not one of them. "What orders do you have for me and my men?"

Trip felt a moment of relief when V'Til conceded without further argument. "Your current post at the FOB on MSR Viper is fine. We're gonna use it as a pivot point for a series of obliques and the blocking force for a series of sweeps to clear out the area around Camp Kelly."

Tucker crossed to a map and set the black thermoplastic clad ballistic-fiber helmet down. For the first time he noticed his own odor and the fact that he had been in the same clothes for close to eight days now, if there had been a female Vulcan in the room he was relatively certain she would be near catatonic from the smell alone.

"As you can see, we've got five MSRs we can operate down, they provide clear fire lanes for suppression from the towers, and they have adequate line of sight for fire missions. We'll keep rotating companies in and out down the MSRs as maneuver elements. If the Romulans want to avoid having entire brigades decimated in close action from small arms and artillery fire, they'll have to keep moving units to reinforce their positions, we can keep 'em off balance by forcing them to keep collapsing flanks in to avoid being caught with their britches down by a maneuver element."

"Does that not seem to be an unnecessary risk given the number of personnel you can draw upon?"

The Vulcan had a point, but Trip had no intention of heavy engagement without heavy artillery and air support, "The Romulans are already snake bit, they're gonna be reluctant to engage large force actions, they're takin' about ten to one casualties against small unit actions. Now that we have air and arty on line, all we need is to get 'em in the open and we can pound them hard. They're gonna give ground until we can't get support on-line because of how close the buildin's are. It's gonna be tough on the road system, but we'll have an AO four kilometers across where we can set up additional FOBs and strong point the MSRs."

"That is a strategically sound plan." V'Til acknowledged. "It would seem you have far more experience in regards to ground operations than I would have initially believed."

"I read a lot." Tucker shrugged, "How many more of your men can we expect to arrive at Camp Kelly?"

"I have issued recall orders to my entire contingent since communications have been restored, by my estimations the entirety of my contingent of three hundred fifty should be here no later than twenty one hundred hours tomorrow."

"That's excellent news. Do you require anything? Water, rations, medical supply, additional weapons or ammunition?"

The Vulcan shook his head, "Colonel Shelby ensured we were adequately supplied before taking our position at the forward operation base."

Trip nodded, "Very good, if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask, sub-commander."

"Understood. With your permission I will return to the forward post." Tucker nodded and the Vulcan raised his own hand, returning the ta'al from earlier, "Live long and prosper, Commander Tucker."

Trip just nodded, "Carry on."

V'Til walked over to the Vulcan commando section and relayed instructions, "You will be permitted eight hours for rest, meditation, and ingestion of sustenance, after that point, report to my position at the forward operations base."

"If necessary, we will report to the position immediately, sub-commander." The head commando stated.

"It is logical that you be permitted rest, our position is well defended and we have been able to repel enemy attacks with little effort, your performance will benefit from time to attend to biological necessities, I will await your arrival in eight hours."

"Very well, sir, we will comply with your directive."

Without warning the garrison loud-speaker usually used for reveille and retreat at the beginning and end of the day began broadcasting a simple bugle and drum call, an ancient caballeria that Trip knew all too well. The Marines during the 47 War were fond of playing it over loud-speakers at positions where the Klingons had dug in. It had not taken long for the Klingons to learn that you only got to hear it three times, after the third time being played their position would be assaulted and subsequently fall. Given their propensity for fighting to the last, such an assault would result in all the warriors being killed, it had not taken long for them to learn to fear the sound of the archaic cavalry call. Its utilization had been the brain-child of Lieutenant Colonel H. Leonard Stilton, who was, himself, an aficionado of old military bugle calls. This one in particular he appropriated because of the subtle psychological effect it had on his Marines, letting them know that they would be expected to completely wipe out the enemy. It wasn't blood lust per se, but it served to instill a type of courage that made the idea of charging and entrenched enemy seem rudimentary and the conclusion fore-gone. The psychological effect it had on the Klingons had caused MCS to name a ship for the particular toque de caballeria.

"Commander Tucker?" Trip looked over to V'Til where he stood transfixed.

"Yes, sub-commander?"

"What is the name of this piece of music? I had never heard it played before today."

"That's called deguello."

"I do not know this word." V'Til stated.

"It means no quarter...the word deguello literally translates to 'slit throat'." Trip replied solemnly.

"Colorfully human." V'Til declared, his words and expression inscrutable to a degree where Tucker couldn't determine if it was disdain or awe.

"Worked pretty good on the Klingons...they learned that you didn't wanna be around to fight once it started playin'. We've probably gotta company commander out there ready to drum up a body count."

V'Til nodded at the prospect, "Very well, I will return to the operations base to provide logistical support as needed."

The low thump and droning roar of outbound artillery punctuated the pause before the bugle began again, repeating the play through. Trip realized he'd better find out what was going on before forces started committing to a fire-fight. He quickly ascended the steps from the Combat Operations Center to the roof where the communications and observation hut had been fortified with layers of sand-bags stacked five feet high and a reinforced slab of ferrocrete had been added as a roof. Walking across the roof-top exit to the bunker he noticed the scorched pit in the thick roof-top where the plasma mortar that had injured Shelby had fallen. Trip entered the structure and immediately established command presence.

"What the hell is goin' on here?"

A Staff Sergeant turned and saluted, "Attention on deck."

"As you were." Trip pre-empted. "Now, what's goin' on here? Who called for the strike?"

"Sir, commanding officer bravo company, one third." A communications Marine replied.

"Get him on the prick." Trip grumbled.

"Aye, sir. Yamabushi, Yamabushi, this is Black Flag, come back, over." The Lance corporal keyed over to the ULF frequency and immediately began speaking into the head-set.

Tucker picked up one of the available head-sets and jacked into the communication terminal in time to here a reply. "Copy Black Flag, this is Yamabushi."

"Yamabushi, Barracuda actual needs SITREP, over."

"This is Yamabushi actual, we have a regiment sized enemy force in the open one point three klicks down MSR Python, four zero zero mikes east south east of our AO. Two reinforced platoon sized indigenous forces units have them engaged on their flanks." His accent was sharp and clipped, truncaing words into razor edged syllabic chunks, definitely Asiatic, but Trip couldn't pinpoint it exactly.

"This is Barracuda actual, that's danger close, Yamabushi."

"Copy that, Barracuda, permission to engage and destroy enemy unit?" It was a little late for that, he already committed, but it sort of fell in the broader aegis of begging forgiveness in lieu of asking permission. It was apparent this man was a hard charger, and he was going to need hard chargers if he wanted to keep the Romulans off balance until relief assets could arrive.

"Roger that, Yamabushi, diverting artillery and air to your position, standby."

Trip reached over to a charging station and grabbed one of the portable links and hooked it to his belt, jacking the head-set in and switching the device to the frequency for A company's communications. He made for the stair well, jogging as he went, and upon reaching the steps shouted, "Down ladder, down ladder, make a hole."

Several Marines flattened themselves against the walls as he tore down the steps, to the ground floor. When he reached the ground floor he threw the door open and stepped out onto the gravel lawn surrounding the C2 building and spied V'Til heading towards the main gate with a seven commando section in tow.

"Sub-Commander! One moment!"

Trip ran over to them, completely ignoring the fact that it was hot, he wasn't getting as much oxygen as his lungs wanted, and that everything on Vulcan was twenty percent heavier than he was accustomed too. The Vulcan officer halted in place and turned.

"Commander, what my I assist you with?"

"Sub-Commander, would you and your men be capable of heading east down MSR Python to provide support for Bravo company, we have a Romulan large unit action pinned in place and two local forces units hitting them on the flanks." Trip explained between breaths.

"Will you be able to provide a relief unit for the operation base?" V'Til asked, but his voice betraying his eagerness to assist in the counter-offensive.

"I'll have two of the reserve platoons from Weapons Company move into place to free up your men." Tucker assured the Vulcan unit commander.

"We are willing and able to assist, Commander. Colonel Shelby provided us with communication devices and frequencies, we will contact Bravo immediately and I will return and ready my men." V'Til had an almost predatory glint in his eyes.

"Alright then, I'll get the weapons company boys over there double time. Bravo command responds to call-sign Yamabushi. Thank you and good luck, sub-commander."

V'Til nodded then said something in Vulcan to his squad before dashing towards the gate and a full sprint that belied his apparent age with the remaining dark haired, bronzed skinned, point eared commandos hot on his heels.

Trip took a hopping step then turned and ran for the Weapons Company operations post one hundred meters from the C2 Bunker. He found himself half wondering if he would wake up from this any minute from now to find out it was all a dream. The heat, the shortness of breath, the weight...it was all T'Pol still lying on him. He would open his eyes and be back in Florida with the morning or afternoon sun baking him and T'Pol lying on his chest, arms draped over his sides, face turned sideways, and he would be able to bend his neck and put his face in that short hair of hers and smell the camphor scent of her shampoo and the woody tinged smell of her own unique scent. He'd reach up and wrap his arms around her and feel the smoothness of her skin, the way it was not quite as warm as his but was so soft and smooth stretched over her petite frame and the deceptively understated muscle of her physique. The only things he was aware of, was the crunch of gravel under his boots, his own breathing, and the bouncing image of the GP medium pre-fab that was acting as weapons company's command post bouncing in his field of view. Another quintet of thumps sounded as another fire mission sent more rounds hurtling towards the Romulan position. Given their proximity, the guns had to be elevated high, shooting the round upward at a ridiculous arc, reaching the pinnacle of their course at about four kilometers up, then abruptly tipping downwards and hurtling towards the ground where a barometric fuse would explode the round three meters from the ground or an impact fuse would detonate the round .01 seconds after impact.

Trip flew past the two Marines on watch at the door and into the command post, heavy with the smell of sweat and the uniquely piquant odor of military equipment that had been manufactured, tested, and treated for resistance to wear. He didn't even pay attention to the "attention on deck" call and the Marines standing to salute, he just looked for the contradictorily blackened bright-work of the CO or XO or someone with enough authority to mobilize anything more than a few dozen men and send them outside the gate. The company CO was immediately in his sight, a short man with a beet red face and corn-silk hair cut high and tight with almost an enlisted scruple. He was broad in body and face and seemed to ooze a sort of text book discipline that considered the idea of a commanding officer running anywhere that was not part of standard PT to be a colossal goat rope and unworthy of the position.

"Drop the geedunk and get two platoons mobilized and to the FOB to relieve the indigenous forces on MSR Viper, cap'n." Trip barked between gasps, his forehead already shimmering with sweat.

"Is the FOB under attack, sir?" The captain was clearly one of those types who figured anyone without an anchor and eagle was either incompetent in regards to the vagaries of ground warfare or a stupid alarmist.

"Negative, local forces unit is moving to provide additional strength for Bravo." Trip wasn't sure why he was having to explain himself, he was in charge now. The captain just stared at him as if not sure what to make of it, what did an engineer from a starship know about ground warfare? Trip supposed he had a point, if Lewis B. Puller rose from his holy and consecrated grave and walked into his engineering room trying to tell him how to run things, he'd have told him exactly where he could get off and upon doing so, where he could stick it. There was no time for him to remind this man he was a decorated veteran of 47, that he was MARSOC trained, and that he'd fought against the Xindi, that would take entirely too long, what he had to do now was shock them into compliance.

"Stop sittin' on your dick-skinners, and get your asses under way, Captain! If you think I won't Ninja Punch every swingin' dick in this outfit you ain't trackin', you get me?"

"Sir, aye, sir!" The Marine bellowed as if he was suddenly transported back to boot camp and Trip was some first-shirt apex DI. Nothing quite so much like God on earth as the hard jawed Smokey, who whispered death and screamed destruction and put the fear of God, NCOs, and the Corps into young men who fancied themselves future Marines.

"Now un-ass my AO!"

"Sir! Lieutenant Coyle, lieutenant Jackson, get your platoons on the grinder, on the double!"

Trip was already exiting the building, walking back towards C2 with the hint of either an angry or exerted flush on his face. "Yamabushi, this is Barracuda actual, over."

"This is Yamabushi, send traffic, over." The rigidly professional voice of the Bravo Company commander replied.

"Yamabushi, I've got eight six Victor Charlies in route to your location to provide operational support, over." Trip found himself wondering with grim amusement whether someone, somewhere was assume his reference to the Vulcan Commandos actually meant that somehow a company of Viet-Cong had managed to find themselves on Vulcan.

"Solid copy, Barracuda, much obliged. Over."

"One last thing, Yamabushi, did you call for the Delta Golf?" Deguello, or DG as it was sometimes called, had managed to work its way into Marine parlance as a PsyOp tool ever since LTC Stilton first appropriated it, when it played it meant assault was imminent.

"That's a Roger, Barracuda."

"I'd appreciate if you would clear that with me in the future, over."

"Roger, Wilco Barracuda, over."

"Copy that. Good luck and get some, Yamabushi. Barracuda, out." Trip covered the remaining distance to the C2 building at a brisk walk, wondering if and when he was going to wake up. Until the point he did, he'd continue to play his part in the dream. Of course this wasn't nearly as surreal as a dream except for the fact that he was on Vulcan, in charge of the military assets in the biggest city, and things actually seemed to be going right, if that wasn't strange he didn't know what was. Time to put smoke on the enemy, good old fashioned righteous smoke from cannon cockers and grunts and zoomies dropping hate and discontent on those Mike Foxtrots for God, country, and the old man. Vengeance for Vulcan, vengeance for Shelby, vengeance for their buddies and strangers and that one guy over in second platoon that could do the funny voices. It was time to give the Romulans pause, time to remind them of their folly, and maybe, just maybe, give them a taste of what they had to look forward to in the coming weeks when the wrath of MCS was brought down around their ears, gonads, and meaty portions.

Trip reflected with amusement how tired he was and how many Romulans he would kill for a shower right now, maybe after Bravo's assault was over he'd allow himself the indulgence. Right now he had more important matters to attend to; namely making sure the hostiles realized just exactly how much business he meant. DWS; doin' work son, from the COC he would work the unique battlefield magic, conjuring maneuver elements and assault elements, air assets and artillery, and he'd let all that havoc rain on the enemy, so much less straight forward than engineering, so much more on the line, but it wouldn't befit the situation to approach it with any less gusto and attention to detail.

**[! Author's Note !] To clarify, Ninja Punch is slang for NJP or Non-Judicial Punishment. It was not meant to imply Trip would start punching people.**


	16. Chapter 16

What had started as a regiment quickly turned into a reinforced brigade, then an under strength division as the Romulans rushed forces into the opening in their Shi'kahr perimeter. Bravo company had really caught them, the entire Romulan force of nearly 2000 was rendered almost immediately combat ineffective. Pinned down by small arms fire, they were savaged by artillery and air assets, so some Romulan S3 all high and mighty and completely ignoring what was actually going on decided to funnel additional forces into the big, open gap already bathed green in Romulan blood and about to turn into a bowl of the steaming ichor as they flooded more troops into the open and exposed area where they used corpses as ramparts against the small arms fire. Even with the situational awareness and initiative being squarely in MAC-V's favor, the potential that the Romulan force would damn the casualties, break out, and overrun the, now, numerically massively inferior Marine force was there, and it had to be remedied. In response what started out as a reinforced company turned into two companies when he had committed what remained of Alpha to the fight, and within a few hours he had everyone he could spare from Weapons and H&S Companies down MSR Python to develop the situation. By 2130 visibility had become a liability and all the air had to RTB for the night except for CASEVAC and supply birds that kept hopping back and forth between the airbase 75 kilometers north west, Camp Kelly, and the AO on MSR Python. Trip had no choice by that point to pull everything from Charlie back to Camp Kelly to ensure the security of their perimeter.

Vulcans had begun to drift into the base from all over, more commandos from V'Til's unit with civilians, ad-hoc militia, and specialists in tow. It was like a group of birds seeking shelter under the squat old-growth against a coming storm that would sway the taller younger trees that would end up thrashed about, broken in half, struck down by lightning or torn up by the roots. The ass was hanging out there for all to see, the sort of numbed violence of occupation would turn into the volatile hatred of a siege. They'd bloodied the Romulans too much, and while each loss for the 1/3 Marine Battalion was an earthquake, the invaders were bleeding out in a slow seep of eighteen to twenty five casualties an hour, until around 1530 hours when the designated marksman and snipers would decided to push a body count for the day, and any Romulan foolish or unlucky enough to be in the open would find himself quickly reduced, sometimes engaged by two or three weapons at a time in the hunt frenzy. But everything was forward today and the wall was covered in the bare minimum as everyone outside the wall was getting some, getting a lot. When the CASEVAC rolled in on slow lazy rotations, two to three wounded at a time, one KIA every seventh flight or so, the individual Marines heading to the aid station and triage for plasma burns or disrupter wounds would talk about it. Rifleman's paradise, individual soldiers that might account for two, maybe three enemies KIA during an entire operation were coming back with fifteen, sixteen to their name. A pair of designated Marksman with the big 10.6mm precision rifles had been firing it up, down Python all day, the suppressors meant to keep the big rounds uncomfortably loud as opposed to deafening steaming as they kept adding water to the can to help muffle it further.

Yamabushi was the rather fitting callsign of Captain Musashibo Benkei, a man every bit the warrior as his namesake, and his boys fought with a ferocity that befit the legendary Genpei war sohei for whom their commanding officer had been named. Trip was impressed by his cool discipline and command presence, his professionalism never faltered even as the battle wore on into its twelth hour. His command of the situation was exemplary, to the extent that by 1930 hours the CASEVAC runs were coming back empty, setting down to take on more ammunition and supplies to the Marines as the Romulans lost their ability to inflict casualties. An entire Romulan Division was combat ineffective and hemorrhaging personnel as the steady sounds of battle continued and the calls for fire support dropped off entirely. The violence of action had been so singularly focused that the MCS engineers had managed to erect another FOB five hundred meters down MSR Python, well within the protective mortar screen of the Weapons Company soldiers at the Operations Base on MSR Cobra, without any harassment. Trip had used the attention of the engagement to send out hunter-killer and sweep teams from the Vulcan Commandos that had made their way to Camp Kelly to suppress and reduce any remaining Romulan mortar units around the perimeter and the cadre of Vulcan doctors and medics that had drifted in were turning around the walking wounded, patching them up with logic driven precision and sending them back to their posts, completely emptying out the aid stations, triage centers, and infirmaries of everything but the critically wounded.

Everything had seemed completely in MAC-V control until the sappers hit at 2247. Trip had been standing out on the grinder outside the COC when the Romulan quasi-suicide squads rushed the main gate, momentarily overwhelming the defenders and pushing inside the compound. It had taken a few moments for Tucker to register what was going on when the first Romulan and Nosferatu-esque auxiliaries dashed across the parade ground and towards the command bunker. When it struck home he began to bellow the words "Sappers, Sappers, Sappers inside the walls" and with his side arm he began engaging the onrushing enemy each bearing their respective petard with little concern beyond the destruction of the mission critical assets of Camp Kelly. He slid back into training and instinct in a muted survival dynamic, simple and raw as if it was only them and himself in all of Camp Kelly and his only task at the moment was to reduce anything that threatened him. Simple pistol drill, one he had done hundreds of times; two shots center mass, switch to a new target and repeat, every four targets drop clip, replace, hit slide release, engage. When the first fell he felt a surge of relief that they were not equipped with dead-man switches for the explosive packs they bore, it also meant as long as they were holding onto their disrupter rifles they would be unable to detonate the device. After the first three dropped he only became aware of the three dots aligned over a hostile and the loud crack of a each double tap, the sound of the clip sliding from the grip, the sensations of jamming a fresh magazine into the well, the snap of the slide returning as he depressed the release then the process would repeat.

Another squad of Marines had responded quickly and began engaging the onrushing sappers with rifles and squad automatic weapons. It was over in less than a minute, all the attackers reduced and the sharper riflemen popping a few rounds into the head of each of the downed enemies from range to ensure they were dead while the EOD engineers arrived. Trip had been barely cognizant of re-entering the C2 bunker and making his way to the COC, he finally realized that this was wearing on him; exhaustion, desperation, fear...all shoved back into some rarely accessed corner of his mind were finally starting to spill out as the room for such feelings had hit capacity; if he didn't get to lie down for just a few minutes he knew he was going to crack. He wasn't sure exactly how he would break, whether it would be a clean fracturing into tears and histrionics or the cold snap that caused men to turn into Heart of Darkness type Alphas who breathed smoke and doom onto enemies in far off and occluded places where only a failure to report back in would signal their death. They turned into Lord Jim nightmares where you began to forget everything except for the breaking point, the event that finally sent you over the edge and all the life before the event and immediately after began a haze, lost to time like an image fading into a thick fog where it disappeared forever, or at least as far as you were concerned. Poor bastards that fell into the trap never ended up remembering who they were before they took on the identity as the warrior penitent and everything and everyone you loved before were lost as you became a new being.

At 0115 the forces down MSR Python fell back to the Forward Operations Base that had been built into and around a subterranean aqueduct pump station. All in all the Marines had lost 17 killed and forty eight wounded, in turn they had wiped out at least one brigade of Romulan forces, the mass of death drawing carrion and opportunist predators from kilometers in every direction as the remainder of the broken and combat ineffective Romulan division feel back to collapse their flanks to avoid what they was sure was to be a sweeping end-run into their CPs and logistical areas. V'Til had lost four commandos killed in action, another fifteen injured, the disposition of the two local forces platoons was uncertain but reports had been optimistic as they trickled into the FOB. The Weapons and H&S company platoons fell back to Kelly to help reinforce in case another massed sapper attack came in the night.

"Commander, sir, perhaps you should get some sleep."

Trip turned to see 1LT Gayle standing near the large situation map, a stack of PADDs at the ready for review. He was taking Colonel Shelby's incapacitation remarkably well considering his position as the Colonel's personal aid. It was, of course, possible that Gayle was just a disciplined young career officer who knew how to internalize when necessary and let other things wash over him to prevent himself from becoming emotionally compromised.

"I'd kinda like to hear an after action report from Cap'n Musashibo before I think about sleepin'. Also, what provisions had been made for the Vulcan civilians and non-combatant personnel?"

"In regards to the latter, we currently have them billeted in the gymnasium, we've armed every able bodied male from our phased pulse rifle reserves and they've been divided into sections under Vulcan Defense Force command per their request. Food was provided from the HDR supply, given the average Vulcan dietary needs, one Humanitarian Daily Ration should be able to provide for two days of food per individual. We have an adequate supply to support up to two thousand seven hundred persons for five days at one ration per day."

Trip nodded, Gayle was nothing if not thorough, "How many Vulcan civilians are in the compound right now?"

"Seven hundred eighty three, sir. In addition there are fifty four commandos currently in Camp Kelly and two hundred eighteen male Vulcans acting as security and auxiliaries." The lieutenant replied.

"Have we lost anyone from the injured CASEVACed from MSR Python?" Trip rubbed his forehead.

"No, sir. There were eight critically injured but stable, the rest will be ambulatory within sixteen hours."

Trip knitted his brow thoughtfully, "I thought SOP was twenty four after being a combat casualty."

"The additional Vulcan medical staff of thirty seven individuals has improved treatment and triage response times by forty one percent, sir. They're doing a real number on making sure our boys are up and about quickly."

Tucker nodded approvingly, "Anything else to report?"

"Sir, contact at four of the FOBs have tapered off to nothing, the Romulan forces pushing on the bases seem to have left to reinforce Shi'kahr."

"Good, then we can redeploy those boys here. How is the star-port-air-field holdin' out?"

"They have more or less reduced the brigade that was assaulting the position to combat ineffectiveness since we were able to get adequate artillery targeting and the shiltron missile systems back online, sir. Currently their casualties have been negligible, and with the potential for immediate close air support, they should not require additional reinforcement beyond indigenous personnel that have already been arriving at the base." Gayle replied in a flatly efficient tone.

"You are very thorough, lieutenant." Trip appraised, then paused, knowing there was another issue on which he needed to be briefed. "How is the skipper?"

Gayle's jaw tightened and he lowered his eyes keeping his head stationary, "He is currently comatose, he is showing very little brain activity but is breathing on his own despite the burns to his lungs. They are not certain if he will ever be able to wake back up, sir."

"Damn shame, he seemed like a good man."

"The best, sir." Gayle said with a steely voice and tone that brokered no debate.

Trip nodded solemnly, taking into account for the first time how close he had possibly been to joining him a short while ago when the sappers had attacked. He felt a twinge of genuine regret that he had not been able to meet the Colonel face to face, as a matter of fact, he was nothing more than a voice to him, but there was something about his presence and personality that convinced Trip that he would have immediately taken a shine to the older Marine officer. It was clear this junior officer considered the Colonel a worthwhile Commander, but then again you never forgot your first CO, and for a young First Lieutenant like Gayle, being taken under the wing of an old warrior like Shelby would certainly serve to mold the remainder of his career.

"As soon as Cap'n Musashibo is confident of his situation at the new FOB, I'd like a technical sent to pick him up and bring him back to headquarters for a debriefin'."

Gayle nodded, "Understood sir, I'll radio over and see that it's all attended to, now please try to get at least a few hours of sleep."

Trip nodded, "Alright, wake me if any situations develop."

"Aye, sir."

Tucker left the COC and began down a narrow hall that contained impromptu billeting for any personnel assigned to C2 for extended periods. MAC-V's executive officer had been away on extension leave when the attack had occurred, using up the leave time he had accrued throughout the year for a trip back to Earth to see his family, as it was his normal C2 billet was vacant and Gayle had informed Trip that they would serve as his quarters for the duration of the battle for Shi'kahr, as it was this was his first time entering them. They were utilitarian accommodations, no bigger than his quarters on _Enterprise_ but with slightly less space being taken up by storage lockers and the like. Upon entering he immediately began rummaging through the chest of drawers for undergarments; boxer briefs, socks, and an undershirt knowing that those he currently wore would be pungent horrors as soon as he pulled off the thermal reactive body glove he had on underneath the MCUU fatigues. He was rewarded for his efforts and gathered the three items making his way into the combination head/shower. He shrugged off his gear at the door, the LBE and body armor dropping to the floor with an unceremonious thump. Bending forward he unlaced his boots then stepping on the heel of first one then the other withdrew his feet from them to be summarily shocked and dismayed the odor emanating from them. The body glove would adjust to temperature, closing itself off to conserve heat or opening to allow it to radiate away and apparently its capacity to soak up sweat was limited when the fibers loosened to allow heat to escape.

Crossing to the head, he sat down and pulled the socks away and crumpling them into a ball of olive drab, sweat soaked cotton fibers he tossed them into the laundry receptacle. He stood again and began unbuttoning the camouflage jacket and pants, pulling them away and folding them as each article was removed. When he pulled the zipped down on the body glove his nose was immediately greeted by the unspeakable pungency of days of collected sweat and normal skin secretions that had seemed to almost ferment into an unspeakably repellent odor of locker-room life forms. He coughed involuntarily and pulling the suit away he threw it in the skin and began running hot water over it. His underwear and shirt had a similar pungency but modified by the natural fibers in which his sweat had soaked. At least there had been the small mercy of not having been required to be in Mission Oriented Protective Posture suits that forced the wearer to occasionally urinate and defecate within the suit itself. His nose sympathetically wrinkled as some part of him anticipated what T'Pol would have experienced and he fought down an urge to gag as the smells became overwhelming for just a moment.

She used to find the smell of human sweat repellent until their relationship had started to bloom, and she began to associate the smell of his sweat with his presence. While the smell was still offensive, she had stated that his odor was unique and she had come to appreciate it as a sign of his physical proximity, even then her tolerance to it was limited. There had been moments in the expanse where a neuro-pressure session would devolve into heated episodes of heavy petting where she would place her face against his body and inhale the scent in a way he found strange and perhaps a little disturbing. He had thought he stank, as there were times when he had not been able to shower before the session, of course she had a unique odor as well and he found it intoxicating even at times when she declared that she found her own smell offensively strong and necessitating bathing. After sex it was probably the best for him, the smell of her bodily reactions still hanging in his nose from where he had plied intimate locations with fingers, lips, and tongue. But on a regular basis he found the smell of her hair and skin pleasing, if only because it served as an additional reinforcement that he was in close proximity to his mate.

Pulling off his undergarments he clenched his jaw as his skin sent a cascade of tingling pain signals of pre-Stage 1 pressure sores along the skin where his undergarments had clung to him. The skin was mercifully clear of ablation or ulceration, but he could tell it wouldn't have been long before a combination of friction and constriction would have eventually led to weeping of the affected areas that would have evolved into full fledged sores. What adipose tissue had existed had mostly burned away from the heat, physical activity, and dehydration leaving the skin seeming a little loose over his musculature. For a moment it felt good to be naked, free of the clothing he had been wearing for the better part of ten days now. He reached over and adjusted the shower to 85 degrees Fahrenheit and turned it on, waiting a moment before stepping under the water. Short of wiping off his face this was the first time he had been able to clean himself since the insertion onto Vulcan, at first it had stung unmercifully on the hyper-sensitive and irritated skin but after a few moments the confused nerves calmed and the sensation brought on almost sexual bliss.

After a few minutes of quick shampooing and soaping he turned off the water to find himself with trembling knees and a positively rampant erection as thoughts of T'Pol and the immediate physical sensation of the shower started to overwhelm him. For a brief moment he contemplated an almost obligatory combat jack, cranking one out against the wall to wash unceremoniously down the drain; a big "fuck you" to the inhospitable hell of a planet, the Romulan belligerents who necessitated his presence, and a war in general that he wanted no part of short of making sure his wife still had a planet to call home. The physical urge for release and the associated hormone high was quickly overshadowed by the overwhelming feeling of fatigue, it was as if showering had washed away some invisible shield of adrenaline and martial bravado and he could finally understand how tired he really was. Drying off turned into a chore as his eyelids began to sink involuntarily and he swayed as equilibrium threatened to abandon him. With hands suddenly weak with exhaustion he pulled on the fresh boxer shorts and crossed to the bunk, staggering slightly as he did.

His intention had been to lay everything out carefully to expedite returning to combat posture when he received his inevitable wake-up call. His boots, socks, uniform, and undershirt would have been carefully laid out with LBE, thigh holster, and body armor set aside, his side arm and rifle would have been off to the far side of all of his equipment but in a location where he could access them quickly if the compound was attacked and he was forced into defensive posture before he could adequately dress. None of that mattered as much now that he felt the urge to sleep totally overwhelm him and he collapsed on the bunk face first, lying still a minute before laboriously rolling onto his back as if some form psychomotor dysfunction had suddenly afflicted him. The last conscious thought he was aware of was the sensation of a body pressing into him and he wasn't sure if he was dreaming it or not because it felt like T'Pol and he would know her body in a second.

* * *

><p>T'Pol settled into her meditation knowing in less than twenty four hours they would be entering the Vulcan system and would likely be in a state of combat for the forty eight hours immediately afterwards as they attempted to force the Romulan fleet into a maneuver pattern away from her home world. She had completed a series of sensor program upgrades that would provide instantaneous updates on enemy position, disposition, and individuals combat status to every ship in Task Force: Tonbogiri. The upgrade protocol was then passed onto <em>Columbia<em> as to allow the same system to be implemented for Task Force: Gungnir. The data could then be utilized directly by the fire control computers on the associated task group ships to allow firing solutions to be immediately calculated irrespective of the lead ship's position relative to the target. It allowed for the rail guns to employ a similar capability to a field artillery Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact operation. With the improvements that they had quickly made to the sensor suite per Commander Tucker's recommendation while they had waited above Earth, _Enterprise_ could place rounds into a targeted area of an enemy ship within one point two meters, this accuracy would be in turn transferred to the targeting systems on the remaining destroyers and frigate. The end result would be devastating, allowing massed firepower to quickly dispatch a Romulan ship and then moving on to another. Mr. Reeds enthusiasm over the upgrade had been palpable.

Captain Archer had acknowledged that the next 72 hours would be exceptionally stressful for the bridge crew and engineering teams and had approved an unorthodox schedule for the next standard duty day allowing the entirety of the bridge staff time to rest adequately in preparation for the impending battle and putting engineering on a staggered shift of four hours on, twenty hours off until they reached Vulcan space. T'Pol intended to spend much of the time either sleeping or in meditation as a form of mental preparation and to allow for the physical stressors of the pregnancy. Phlox had demanded she report to sick bay when he shift ended and did another thorough scan to check the status of the embryo and to see if her immune system had ceased its attack on the implantation site of her uterus. He had been pleased to report that it seemed as if the worst was over and her body was beginning to accept the alien DNA in the blastocyst. Her meditation as of late had focused on entering her empty space to purge immediate and surface emotions then retreating into her biology consciousness to the place where the proto-child lay as part of the extended parent bond/body awareness. She had realized that this seemed to be a subset of the healing trance mentioned in the Kir'Shara. She resolved herself to writing an essay regarding this specific sub-set of the Surakian disciplines, depending on what she noted in later stages of the pregnancy it could prove to be a highly beneficial component of the mate and parent bond.

As she entered the empty space she was immediately startled to feel a hand on her throat coming from behind. The initial fear of the sensation that seemed at first threatening was replaced with confusion as the empty place seemed to immediately shift to the fog bound area of body consciousness where the ardent sphere was warded by the pseudo-Trip. The hand didn't clasp, the fingers uncurled and softly kneading the flesh of her throat, as another hand clasped flat against her abdomen, stroking across her belly in line with her navel. The hands were large, the fingers strong and callused. She turned suddenly, to stare into the face of her mate, his pupils dilated, his nostrils flaring wide with each deep breath.

"Trip." The only breathless word she could manage as he buried his face into her neck, his chin pushing at her clavicle and his hands stroking her back.

He didn't respond except to continue his purposeful fondling and play at the skin of her throat with his lips. Here in this space she could feel nothing of him in the bond, this was the most basic body conscious aspect of the mate telepathy and everything was manifested in its most literal form, his desire did not project anymore than what he did to her, as such it was her own desire she began to feel burning like a strange fire in her stomach. Her hands came up and laced fingers through his hair, feeling the strange scratchy sensation of stubble against her neck. There was something elemental and animalistic about the way he clutched at her, the way his lips moved in a sort of soft nibbling, playing against her skin like soft teeth, and his deep huffing breaths rung in her ears. The dimmed sphere of their offspring's presence seemed to brighten, burning away the fog and allowing her a moment to look down and realize this manifestation of her mate was naked and clearly aroused. She had become so accustomed to feeling the stimuli in the bond before noticing it visually that there was something strange about this episode, the only way she knew his intent was based on how his hands caressed her, the way his mouth played at her, and the deep purposeful breaths that were the only sounds leaving him. She had no idea what he would do next, where his hands would roam, where his lips would touch, and without the context of his mental projection she found each moment more intensely stimulating because of the unpredictability.

"K'diwa..." She sighed as lips clamped onto the sensitive skin of her clavicle and his right hand grabbed high on the back of her right thigh. She was losing herself in the sensation, and something about it amused her as the glut of positive emotions seemed to flow through her unrestrained. She let out the strange laugh she only released in one another's minds and with her chin pointing upwards as she leaned her head back to allow him easier access to the hyper stimulated skin on her throat she spoke. "You must be asleep, I have never known you to be this quiet for this long in the past."

His actions stopped suddenly and he took a step back, his eyes wide and his mouth drawn in a thin expressionless line, "You mean I ain't dreamin' this?"

She replied by shaking her head, her brows elevated in a suitably Vulcan display of bemusement. "So is this the sort of behavior you regularly engage in during your REM state?"

"Well I was wonderin' why you weren't pushin' me away and talkin' about the necessity that I assay the warp plasma system..."

T'Pol clamped her hands behind her back, "It is not a dream, Trip."

"Sonuva..." He looked down, noticing his nudity and the clear sign of his concupiscence and arched an embarrassed but matter-of-fact eyebrow, "Now how do I will myself some clothes?"

"What would you have done if this was indeed a dream?"

"I dunno, just sorta go with the flow." He answered plainly.

"And what would that entail?" Her voice became very soft, almost passionate.

"Want me to show you?" He stepped in close, his lips hovering over her forehead as he breathed in what she understood to be and he remembered of her scent.

She craned her neck, standing on her toes to bring her lips to kiss the left edge of his jaw, "Do you think that it might not perhaps be inappropriate to do so in front of our child?"

Trip smiled, "It's a lil early for the lil'un to be mentally traumatized by catchin' mommy and daddy goin' at it, doncha think?"

She said nothing else, there was nothing more that needed to be said in this place where she could be her most expressive. This deepest layer of the bond, was usually nothing more than a sensation in a normally functioning mate bond, it was wordless, colorless, a sensation that was all but ignored and meant to be contextualized as mutually shared feelings, but in this place where they could still remain conscious of each other she needed no vestiges of pretense. She could be instinctive without losing control, she could be uninhibited and not feel the pressure of shame at illogical behavior, she could be what some subtle and repressed part of her _wanted_ to be when she was with him. She dispensed with every shred of Vulcan propriety, every modicum of Surak and the Kir'Shara and decided to be nothing more than _his_ female, _his_ mate. She grabbed his head and pulling it to meet her half-way between his height and standing on her tiptoes and locked her lips over his in her awkward neophyte way that realized this was beyond agreeable, here in this place she could call it for what it was...love, she loved it.

* * *

><p>Deep in the darkness bounded bright circle of the body consciousness, T'Pol lay on top of her mate, their limbs entangled in an exaggerated fashion of post-coital closeness. Her fingers twined with his as she looked at his hands, reflecting idly on the difference in scale and how comfortably she fit on his chest. Even if this was all occurring there bonded minds she found comfort in his desire to have her, to hold and be close to her. It also meant he was still very much alive and when she reflected on that aspect of what had happened she felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief. She rolled over, kissing him softly but with a kind of sad desperation.<p>

"What's the matter, darlin'?"

She lowered her head to rest on is sternum, his pulse projection causing a soft thumping in her ear as she heard the slow beating. She let out a sobbing sigh as the weight of the repressed fear and despair poured back through her reserve into her body consciousness, the effect of adrenaline and cortisol having an immediate physical and psychological effect that projected into the bond. She felt a palpable moment of comfort when his hand came to tenderly stroke her face.

"What's wrong, baby?" He whispered softly.

"I feared that you may have been killed." Her voice trembled.

"No, darlin' I'm fine. They've given it their best shot so far, but I'm fine."

She looked into his face, a mask of concern making her seem that much more beautiful to him. He stroked her cheek and looked into those big brown eyes, seeing her worry and her love. She had never said it out loud, never the three magic words and there were times he wanted to hear it despite the fact he knew the truth of it, but he could find comfort in the fact that it was there without precondition or reservation, even if she didn't advertise it.

"Some sappers made it inside the wall tonight. They were comin' right towards me, but we got 'em all."

"Have you been injured?"

"Nope, can't say why, but neither me nor Hayes' boys have gotten hurt at all." He sighed, his eyes suddenly looking sad and distant, "Not everybody is that lucky though. We've got people dyin' down here. It's not as bad as it could be, but it ain't good either."

"K'diwa, we are less than a day away now, we will be there soon." She replied.

"How big a fleet group are you comin' with?"

She looked at him as if suddenly unsure what to tell him.

"T'Pol... C'mon baby, tell me?"

"Trip, the Marines will not arrive for another two days after we arrive in system. Enterprise and Columbia are forming the vanguard along with ten smaller ships, we are meant to create an opening for the landing force."

Trip frowned, his eyes rolling away to look off into space so he could contemplate, T'Pol found the sudden change in demeanor worrisome.

"Trip, what is wrong?"

"Well, I think we might've pissed the Romulans off really bad today."

"What do you mean?"

"We had a company of Marines from Camp Kelly pin down a regiment sized unit of Romulans, and before the sun set we had three companies worth of Marines layin' into a whole division of 'em. By the time contact ended, they lost over a brigade of troops, and we could count our dead on fingers'n toes. Seventeen of our boys, four Vulcan commandos, maybe about seventy four wounded, none serious. The Romulans musta lost at least fifty one hundred by the time it was all said'n'done."

"So you are safely at a fortification now?"

"Not sure how safe it is, but yeah, we're at Camp Kelly." He ran fingers through the silken texture of her hair. "I wonder what time it is, I feel like we've been here for a while."

"Do you wish me to check? I am currently meditating, but I can return to consciousness to see the time." She replied accommodatingly.

"No." He held her tighter, "Please, just...stay with me a lil while longer."

"Of course, K'diwa." She lowered her head to his chest again and heard and felt him take a long deep satisfied breath.

She was not sure how long they remained there, neither speaking further as they savored the moment of togetherness. The intensity that their bond had reached, then to be so suddenly smothered and then separated by distance and danger, it felt like the ten days that had elapsed were ten months. Tucker's mind began to race, what would happen when it was time for her to give birth? By necessity she would have to leave _Enterprise_ to raise the child, or he would. Either way, one of them was going to have to leave the ship, a missile cruiser was no place for a child even if MCS didn't take issue with it, he would. He couldn't put his child in harm's way like that, for all his faith in the ship and its crew, it was still a warship as far as the TO&E and whoever would be taking shots at them were concerned, and a warship was definitely NO place for a child. If ten days was hard to bear, what would they do when they were apart for ten months or sixteen? No, he couldn't do that to her, couldn't do it to himself. He would take a staff position, maybe at Jupiter Station or Utopia Planetia. He was relatively sure she could land a position at the Academy easily or, barring that, the Vulcan Embassy would surely be glad to have her back. Without warning, he heard the sound of his rank and name being called, echoing distorted through the space they occupied.

"Did you hear that?"

T'Pol raised her head, "Hear what?"

_Commander Tucker._

"That..."

"I do not hear anything, K'diwa."

Trip suddenly understood what was happening, "Damnit...they're tryin' to wake me up. Somethin' must be happenin'."

"Trip?"

"I love you, darlin', I love you more'n anything in this big ol' universe." He stroked her face again, "I gotta go now. Tell the Cap'n that we took control of the dampenin' system."

"Trip...I lo-"

His eyes opened and he took a deep breath, sitting up his eyes fought to adjust as he noted the dark outline of what had to be 1LT Gayle silhouetted against the light in the hall giving the Marine the look of divinity as the actual light in the hall created a halo effect around his head.

"What time is it?" Trip croaked.

"Zero five fifty, sir.

"What's the story?" Trip rubbed his eyes, blearily as he tried to return to the waking world. He was more than a little irritated, he had wanted to hear the words, finally to have her say it to him point blank would have been gratifying. Something about how he felt seemed to indicate he had only managed a few hours sleep, he felt, perhaps, more exhausted now than he had when he first entered the room from the COC, but at least he was clean now and that counted for a lot.

"We are seeing increased probes along the perimeter, so far there hasn't been any contact against any of the gates, but the frequency of the probes is seven hundred eighty percent of normal." Gayle said slowly and quietly as Tucker tried to finish waking himself up.

"Has there been any action against Bravo?" Trip asked stifling a yawn, voice muted with the congested tones of interrupted sleep.

"No, sir."

Trip nodded, running a hand through his hair, trying to divine a purpose behind the increased probes. It was a fairly pedestrian tactic meant to keep an opponent off balance and in a situation where foes were evenly matched it could be effective. At present they were nothing remotely like being evenly matched; the Marines had torn into the Romulans with a ferocity that Trip had come to understand and expect during his tenure with them in the 47 War. If it were not for the oppressive weight of numbers the Romulans really would not have stood a chance. So, unless they were planning a full-fledged assault, which would invariably result in them bottlenecking at the gates and being cut down en masse, what could they possibly be hoping to achieve?

The realization struck home and he bolted upright. "Shit, do we have any drones or recon units out in the city proper?"

Gayle shook his head, "No sir."

"They're tryin' to hem us in here so they can take over the Planetary defense batteries!" Trip grabbed hands full of uniform pieces and hastily started pulling them on.

"Sir?" Gayle sounded instantly confused.

"We're poundin' em to hell'n gone with artillery when they come out in the open and we're gettin' about twenty of 'em an hour with the snipers. They can't even get in range with the mortars now, so what else can they do? They can't plink at us from orbit because they haven't got any telemetry, so all they can do is fly a ship into the atmosphere and try'n bomb us. If we've got the planetary defense batteries, we'll knock 'em out of the sky, so they have to take the batteries." Trip had already managed to get the tank and undershirt on and was pulling on the MCUU trousers. "Get Sub-commander V'Til on the prick and tell him we need him and at least a platoon of his best online and back at Kelly as soon as possible and get a column of technicals out to pick 'em up. We've gotta get this locked down or we won't last the twenty hours until Enterprise'stask group gets here."

"Aye, sir...wait...sir...?" Gayle paused before reaching the door, spinning on his heels, "How do you know when Enterprise will return?"

"My wife told me." Trip replied, pulling on the pair of fresh socks.

"Sir?"

"My wife is Vulcan, she's science officer on Enterprise, Vulcans are telepathic. Math's pretty simple."

Gayle's mouth dropped open in what could have been shock or confusion. "So she was _Vulcan_ and pregnant?"

Tucker stopped, "Christ did everyone hear that transmission?"

"Well you have to admit, sir, it was pretty much something right out of a movie or book." Gayle allowed a bit of a grin, the first time Trip had witnessed such an expression on the young man.

"Yeah, guess it was pretty cinematic, wasn't it?" Trip paused, looking over to Gayle who was still standing there with a now dippy grin marring what had been, in his memory, uncharacteristic professionalism given his age. Part of him wondered if Gayle had a similar fancy for Vulcan women and this revelation had served to let him now his plight was not hopeless. "Well what are you waitin' for lieutenant? Double time! Unass my AO!"

"Aye, sir. Should I get the MARSOC section online too?"

Trip shook his head, "No, I'll take care of that, I'm goin' out with them."

"Sir! We can't risk you as a casualty."

Trip shrugged, "I'm the most qualified option, lieutenant. I have experience with Romulan code systems and how to defeat 'em and I know my way around a weapon. We've got no choice. With V'Til's commandos we should be able to get in and out lickety-split and take care of this before it turns into a problem, because if we lose control of the batteries, I won't be the only casualty we have to worry about."


	17. Chapter 17

"Commander what kind of goat-rope do you have planned today?"

Trip immediately turned at the familiar Vulcan tone using Marine vernacular. Suvak's forehead was partially obscured be a large bandage and the darkened green of dried blood caked the right side of his face. He was still clad in traditional Vulcan pilgrimage robes over his tactical gear as were the four humans with him. At least one of the humans also appeared to be injured, second degree burns on his left ear, part of the jaw and left cheek. It was strange that the humans could have almost passed more for Vulcan than the section chief who was, in fact, Vulcan. With stern countenances they stood like golems waiting to be told what thing or persons threatened their mandates so that they may go crush them in a fury of dark state-sponsored fury. The smells of combat; sweat in the case of the humans, cordite, blood, and dirt hung around them as if it had they had been drenched in it and were pulled out still dripping from a battle zone.

"You were the local forces platoon..."

Suvak nodded, "Along with some indigenous personnel. The regimental group that we engaged had been on the way to take one of the Planetary Defense batteries. Captain Musashibo's arrival likely kept us from being overrun, it was one hell of a fight, Commander, my compliments to the Captain."

Tucker nodded, flipping open a pouch on his LBE to stuff a trio of magazines into place. With the relative shortness of distance between Camp Kelly and the next closest Planetary Defense station, they could afford to pack additional ammunition, and it was quite likely they would need it. He wasn't entirely sure what Suvak and Section 31's presence signified, but it was only fitting that he extend the courtesy of the house he had inherited.

"Is there anything we can do for you, Mister Suvak? We've got good medics and a few particularly talented Vulcan doctors available. There's also plenty of food and ammo, anything you need, you have full authorization to requisition."

One of the agents looked over to Suvak who nodded and the human quickly exited the COC, likely to acquire more combat materiel. The Vulcan section chief remained in place purposefully, eyes still fixed on Tucker. Trip could instinctively sense that the Intelligence Agent wanted something else that hadn't been offered. Trip ceased his preparations, fixing the Vulcan with a knowing look.

"So you want to tag along...huh?"

Suvak allowed a curt nod, "It would only be logical, commander."

"Suvak, you've been fightin' hard for hours now, you and your men have gotta need some rest." Tucker protested, not sounding terribly convincing.

"Me and my men are going with you, mister Tucker. I am a citizen of Vulcan and an agent of Earth, macvee is the only hope for Shi'kahr, and Camp Kelly is not only the heart of macvee, it is sovereign Earth territory. I would no more see if fall than I would see Romulans overrun San Diego, Hague, or Cape Town, mister Tucker."

Trip sighed, not wanting to be on this fool's errand himself he was loath to put anyone else in harm's way. He was already dragging V'Til, fourteen of his commandos, and the seven MARSOC operators along on this imminent bear-fuck , no reason to pull Special Intelligence Directorate into this possible misadventure. "Suvak, you're right, this is a goat rope. I'm not a Marine officer, hell I'm not even a combat MOS, I'm an engineer who just happens to have a bit more extensive cross trainin' than most. I can't command Camp Kelly, all I can manage is logistics and maybe a bit of strategic long view. If the Romulans take even one of the batteries, orbital strikes'll be goin' down on Shi'kahr faster than a Deltan girl on a first date on Risa."

Suvak cocked an amused brow at the analogy remembering both the connotations of "going down" among humans and an incident with his first pon farr and his rather unconventional remedy as an unattached male. It had, in fact, been a Deltan female he had engaged to sate the blood fever. She had been quite proficient, all but sating the feral urge to mate during their first coupling which left him with the compulsive but fully cognizant urge none-the-less which she served to remedy multiple times. As with most things, he was unconventional for a Vulcan regarding his attitudes towards sex. He wouldn't say that he enjoyed it specifically, he wouldn't admit to enjoying most things but he found it to be a logical and effective method for remedying stress and he had established a reputation in a small but exclusive circle in Southern California during his time at Twenty Nine Palms as being quite skilled in the sexual arts. It was manipulative of him, but collegiate human females found him fascinating as an outlet for some forbidden xenophilia as non-organic as plastic and designed to chagrin their parents or, in the case of more mature females, as tangible representation of their social progressivism. They where suitably taken by the "bad boy" persona he had established as the "first Vulcan Marine" as the personnel of Twenty Nine Palms and MWTC Bridgeport had routinely called him as a human joke. Of course he found all of his sexual encounters to be tragically immature, whether they were twenty one or forty one, and served as nothing more than a stress outlet for him, the preponderance of birth control methods on Earth had been, indeed, fortunate as he had been distastefully promiscuous by human standards, much less Vulcan.

"Commander, that is precisely why you should probably stay here, we need your situational awareness to be focused on the Camp, there is a good chance the Romulan forces will hit the camp hard. It's the one thing they haven't tried and there-fore, haven't failed at." Suvak lifted the desert colored ball cap from his head, adorned with a patch of the United Earth Federal Republic and ran his fingers through militarily short hair.

"Well then who's gonna make sure systems are locked down adequately at the defense battery?"

"You can talk us through it Commander Tucker."

Tucker cocked a brow, suddenly it was becoming more clear, the probes, the regimental action the previous day. "We're gonna get hit soon, at least a brigade...they know we know they're after the batteries. We're bleedin' 'em so bad they're gonna be combat ineffective in less than a week if they maintain their current posture in Shi'kahr."

Suvak nodded.

"What other situational intelligence have you got?"

"I have figured out about as much as you have Commander, but it is only logical. If you muster a company to head to the planetary defense batteries in the area, they won't have significant room to maneuver a blocking force, so they'll have to hit the base at full strength, if that is the situation, we need a commanding officer who has the authorization to make the tough decisions inside the wall."

Trip half smirked, "You coulda just said so..."

"My job is just to provide you with relevant information and let you make the decision, sir. That is the rendered essence of leadership, congratulations, you've just made your first step towards being a fine commanding officer." Suvak replied, suddenly feeling his age intensely. Most Vulcans assumed he was in his early fifties at most, the more astute could make the determination from his eyes, the strain that was hinted there. Humans had of course always assumed he was young, by human standards he didn't look a day over thirty two, the fact he was eighty five meant he was approaching mid-life for a Vulcan even if he didn't look it he suddenly felt pangs of regret. Maybe if he made it through this he would find an unattached female and take a mate before it was too late in his life for it.

Tucker nodded, pulling a folding computer console from his LBE, "All the system protocols and security algorithms are in this unit. Once you jack it into the control system it'll hijack the software. We'll be able to control it through the planetary information network using the new protocols I uploaded to our systems here."

Suvak took the unit and nodded, handing it off to one of the other agents who carefully hooked it to his own LBE under the long desert robes. "Well, we will be off then, Commander."

"Suvak..."

The Vulcan arched a brow, "Commander?"

"Be careful out there, be sure to come back alive, understood?"

Suvak nodded, "Aye, sir."

The Vulcan turned and exited the COC, the remaining three Section 31 Operators and the MARSCO following along with V'Til and one of his lieutenants. Trip felt a moment of strange melancholy, like he was being left behind, like he was sending people off to do something he couldn't or wouldn't do himself. Jonathan had confided in him once, when they had pinned the medals on him after the Xindi campaign he claimed it felt like a millstone was being hooked to his chest. That was the burden of command, the tacit guilt of sending other people to do something you felt you should be doing yourself knowing that given the situation, you wouldn't want to do it either. As junior officers you were ordered on shit details, worse than KP, thankless tasks and suicide missions that you would never get credit or appreciation for while pompous officer-bureaucrats engaged in mutual self-congratulations and awarded each other medals for it. Or at least that's what it felt like; the truth was even the most supercilious windbag had once been a junior nobody who agonized over orders and details and often drowned in the self-doubt that their orders caused. As much calling the shots from the big picture was part of command, so was the agony of sending men to their deaths; you had to internalize, catalogue, and marginalize the fact of it or go mad.

Trip faked a sigh, "All dressed up and nowhere to go."

He looked around the COC for a moment, feeling as if the walls of the C2 building were closing in, trying to suffocate and crush him. The weight of responsibility, the weight of command, the weight of doubt and worry and self-effacing fear. He had to get out of the building, he had to be out in it, commanding the preparations in the hot sun and dry wind where disruptors and mortars and the condensced violence could reach him and force him to be worthy of the right to tell men to go forth, go forth and die for people they didn't know and high ideologies they didn't understand, politics that transcended all but the thoroughly initiated and strategic overview that stared into crystal balls prognosticating effects fifty years in the future and doing what was possible to make them come to pass or prevent them as need be.

"Lieutenant Gayle!"

"Sir!"

"Get me all the company commanders down on the grinder, and get transport assets online to move firebase Court, Bannock, and Howes' personnel to Camp Kelly, they're strategically of zero consequence now and we need additional assets online here." Trip barked with military crispness.

"And their materiel, sir?" Gayle inquired.

"Anything that can't be transported field expedient, tell 'em to demolition it, but leave any humanitarian rations behind, if the civilians are in the area need somethin' to eat or water they'll know to head to the firebases, so no booby traps and take the perimeter directionals off-line before exfil."

"What if the Romulans attempt to poison the supplies, sir or take them for themselves?"

"Any Vulcan woman worth her salt'll be able to smell somethin' wrong with the HDRs before the first bite, as for them appropriatin' 'em, calculated risk, but I doubt they came into this tussle ill-prepared, they've got fifty dang ships in orbit right now. I'd rather risk them stuffin' themselves on tax payer paid rations than leavin' any Vulcans hungry or thirsty."

"Aye, sir."

"They're my wife's people after all..." Trip grinned.

Gayle allowed a hint of a knowing smirk, "Oorah, sir."

* * *

><p>T'Pau looked long across the cargo bay of the <em>V'slan<em>, the large room usually used to carry the lion share of materials and equipment was packed with humanity. Somehow they had managed to fit an entire company of 294 men in the confines of the cargo bay, their equipment stowed under cots and in cargo netting, the smell nearly floored her as she had entered the room. The pungency and foulness of cramped humanity, three hundred men seething sweat and musk as they worked themselves into the lather of war preparation. It was like entering a room of rutting animals, large predators caught in the frenzied limbo of wanting to destroy or mate. She could understand how the odor could be possibly intoxicating despite the nausea she was experiencing, the members of the First Marine Regiment had fought in every major conflict Earth's United States of America had been involved in since their early twentieth century. Theirs was a long and proud martial tradition and confidence seeped from the room of men in their loudness, crassness, and rowdiness. Among their number some sat quietly, reading books, meditating, tending to the implements of their craft, and they added a strong current of professionalism to the overpowering brew. This was the vanguard of Vulcan's liberation, these were the soldiers that would crash like waves against the numerically superior Romulans and wash them off her world.

When she met the Marines of the First Reconnaissance Battalion earlier in the day she had felt a strange sense of fear; their polite words and strange smiles did little to hide the focused violence in their eyes as they did their best to not let her see the ominous truth of their craft. They were scientific killers, murderer surgeons who would cut into the enemy, cutting their arteries and leaving them bleeding to death there in the desert. It would be swift and mechanically merciless; they would be dead before they even realized what happened, and the scalpel they would wield would be the individuals brigades to which they were assigned as assets.

This was the most proximity she had experienced with humans, surrounded for brief moments by their faces, the stubble that had grown on their faces and their uniforms and equipment, the odor of meat eating bodies. The sweet and cloying smells of deodorant, mint toothpaste and mouthwash and chewing gum, the tinge of pungency caused by their sexual self-regulatory acts accomplished in the dark of lights-out. The fear, the fear, the idea that if they had wanted they could take over the ship, murder the crew and an instinctive fear of worse for the females. But at the same time, there was a strange reassurance in the fact that they never looked the violence at her, it was almost as if it would die for a moment if they made eye contact and would resume to stare past her, off through the light years to their destination almost as if the sheer weight of their animus could burn the invaders from Vulcan. The officers were different for the most part, the danger seemed to have bled from the eyes of the senior officers and staff, and now it was a kind of smoldering mental intensity like a Kal-toh master that moved pieces into position with seeming lack of order or reason as part of a gambit that was hundreds of moves away. When she voiced the comparison the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Battalion had laughed and replied, "Ma'am, we make it up as we go along...semper gumby. No plan survives initial contact with the enemy."

She had been shocked, how did one enter something so dangerous without a plan, "Surely it would be impossible to fight a war without strategy."

"That's why we're always evolving the strategy and adapting to the situation, ma'am. It's just like nature, if you can't evolve, you die."

It was crass and simplistic; that is to say it was a decidedly human perspective. How could her perceptions of these people have been so horribly skewed? They were barbarians, they were poets, they were impulsive, they were wise, how could they be so many contradictory things at once? She suddenly remembered the conversation she had with Colonel Shelby that one night at Maggy's Drawers inside MAC-V Camp Kelly. It had been the only time he had ever made eye contact for more than a few seconds since the first time they had met when she was little more than a child sixteen years before. He never spoke of that first meeting, he likely didn't even realize it had been her. Shelby had revealed many things he had neither alluded to or would have commented on before. Seventeen years on Vulcan, fully over a third of his life had been spent on her world. Everything he knew of home had been severed, his life belonged to Vulcan and while he spoke of it with fondness, there was always a kind of subtle sadness of a man who knew, for whatever reason, that he could never go home. She had finally asked a question she had felt was innocent enough, having no idea how it would server to overshadow the remainder of the evening.

They had sat at a corner table, it seemed as if it was reserved and privileged. A small placard had adorned the middle declaring it to be the "Chesty" Puller Table, he later explained that it was reserved for senior officers and their guests only, just a small privilege of rank. It had been rare for her to see the Colonel out of uniform and she had found his appearance agreeable. He had changed before arriving and was wearing a pale blue button down shirt and dark grey trousers that appeared to have been from much earlier in his career when he had made a conscious effort to show off his physique. He was still very powerfully built, broad shouldered with a strong chest and muscular arms, the only real indication of age was his face, tanned dark and marred with frown lines around his mouth, eyes, and forehead and the slight amount of grey creeping into his brutally short hair. There were times when T'Pau had wondered what he would have looked like had he been Vulcan, the severity in his face likely would have persisted, and she was relatively certain he would not have been as well developed physically. Most Vulcan males were several inches shorter than the Colonel and despite the higher body density of her people, the Colonel probably handily outweighed him owing to the musculature and bone thickness as suggested by his large hands and ample wrists.

He had been sipping slowly at his drink, cranberry juice and gin over ice. T'Pau was not unaccustomed to alcohol, as part of her Kolinahr training she had imbibed regularly as a test of discipline. By the last stages of the training a master could drink until thoroughly inebriated and still maintain complete logic. While she had never quite reached that degree of mastery, usually because of her low tolerance owing to her metabolic rate and size, she could comfortably drink with no loss of mental or emotional discipline, her speech on the other hand tended to begin to fail her as words slurred slightly. In a concession to avoid causing the Colonel discomfort by dint of her refusal to drink while he did so in front of her she had asked for a glass of wine, a tempranillo which was more of a pleasure to her nose than palette and much easier on her alcohol tolerance and the strong spirits of the Kolinahru.

"How has your spouse dealt with such a long separation?" She was under the impression that all officers at the rank of company commander or higher were married. She had always assumed it was just traditional or part of the martial aspect of their culture. It was logical for superior warriors to pass on their genes to ensure their traits would continue in the greater human gene pool, humans clearly bred prodigiously and based on she had learned seemed to enjoy the act. He just laughed, long and hard, wiping a tear from his eye as the display of mirth brought him to lachrymation. She had heard the human term "laugh until you cry", such was the nature of unrestrained human emotions one action causing another that were often disassociated from each other. Now she found herself wondering if the tears had not been the genuine reaction and the laughter was a ruse to cover the fact that her words had caused him emotional pain or discomfort.

"I'm not married, minister."

"I understand, separation of this length could complicate a matrimonial relationship. Were any children produced by a previous union?" What a fool she had been, she had hurt him without realizing it.

"I was never married, minister. I was engaged to a young woman when my first tour on Vulcan began...we didn't last a year, she couldn't get past the distance and the fact it would be three years before I could be posted back to Earth. She left me. So after that point I pretty much concluded it made sense to just stay on Vulcan as long as MCS wanted to keep me here, ma'am." He looked at the wall but kept his voice affable, diplomatically friendly and accommodating as was usual for him and of course he was, as always, deferential and respectful.

"Colonel..."

He interrupted, "You don't have to call me by rank ma'am, you can call me mister Shelby, or just Wayne if you want too."

Then she had said the most culturally insensitive thing she believed she ever had. "Mister Shelby, that does not preclude the eventual formation of a union, Colonel. It is logical that you would seek to pass on your genetic heritage."

She was viewing it through the Vulcan perspective, not paying attention to the fact that reproduction was not nearly as matter of fact among humans. Her people often married at his age or even later, it was hard at times to remember they only had a little over half a natural Vulcan life span and some humans were wont to die earlier than what a natural life span would dictate. There was another saying that was remarkably similar among most species she had encountered, "the brightest candle burns the fastest". Perhaps it was a mercy that some individuals died earlier than expected; after a life of such intensity to be crippled with infirmity and the painful knowledge that one would never be as they were would have to be maddening in an emotional species like humans.

He smiled, "Minister T'Pau, I'm past my prime, practically an old man for purposes of a first marriage. At my age children would be pretty much out of the question, maybe if I was rich or famous I could find some young filly that would be willing to let some codger like me get her pregnant so she could tie me down legally, but I'm just an old marine, nothing like that in my future, ma'am."

At the time it had seemed a ridiculous assertion on his part, at 47 he was only a third of the way through his projected life span. Further research had gone to show that will the length of life had been drastically lengthened in humans, certain aspect of longevity had not adequately evolved in time. Despite his physique, strength, and endurance, his body was indeed past its spring years and all he could look forward to from that point on was gradual decay and failure of a body they had entirely too short a time to rely on fully. If she had understood the concept at the time she would have viewed it as tragic; this man had burned up the best years of his life on her world, a world that would never had acknowledged or shown appreciation for it. To thank a human for a service they volunteered and were adequately compensated for seemed illogical, however if it was ever to be put into adequate terms a Vulcan could understand they might consider it differently.

The thoughts and emotions she experienced now only served to compound the shame she felt over what she had done to T'Pol. Emotions...how strange, her meditation was not proving adequate, nor was her Kolinahr training. Had there been an element of jealousy in her victimization of her elder? Curiosity was deemed logical when it spurred the individual to seek explanations and understanding, similarly guilt over an act that caused harm of distress to another was acceptable as long as it did not lead to self-destructive or blatantly illogical behavior. Regardless of her intentions, she was now inexplicably entwined in their life as she had seen and experienced a moment of intimacy between them. The concept of debt and obligation were not alien to her, Surak taught that one must be mindful of obligation and seek to repay courtesy with courtesy. It was especially important to ensure recompense was made for offense and it was, without a doubt, an offense she had committed, not just to her Vulcan elder but also her mate for invading his privacy as well when she telepathically invaded their marriage bed.

"Minister T'Pau, I know they may see a little coarse to you, but I'm sure they would find your presence..." The human officer was perhaps as old in standard human years as she, he paused as if looking for the culturally appropriate word, "...agreeable. I assure you they will be on their best behavior if you wish to go mingle among them."

She did not feel any particular inclination to do so she would be in close proximity to them, their brash nature, their bellicose demeanors, the odor, and of course there was the matter of lack of personal space, she would not be able to keep them at the distance she would feel most comfortable with. She still felt herself still relatively intimidated by these humans, however some of them would surely by injured, maimed, and killed within the next few days not for the sake of their world, but for hers. She could endure a little discomfort with that in mind.

* * *

><p>By 1330 hours, the Romulans had established a Headquarters post in Tav'Sal'Nava located midway between MSR Viper and Python and had reinforced heavily. Suvak and his intuition had been correct, Trip reflected ruefully as he watched scores of Romulans taking positions to prepare for the assault. Initial estimates put the opposing force at roughly six companies, the Romulan force structure seemed to be based around 100 soldier units as the basic building block for large unit actions. The S-2 had reason to believe that the units were further grouped into an intermediate unit formation of three hundred which operated somewhere between the function of a company or battalion. They had managed to mass a great number of troops just inside the minimum range of the artillery, they could attempt to attempt fire at maximum elevation and raise the cannons slightly to allow for a hyper steep angle, but a sudden crosswind would create a risk of the rounds coming back down inside the walls of Camp Kelly or the cannons themselves could shift uncontrollably damaging the unit or personnel. Within the defilade of artillery, however, mortars were still an option and the weapons company began fire missions in support of the two FOBs outside the camp's walls.<p>

All five platoons that had come in from Fire Bases Court, Bannock, Howes, Gamble, and Lester, all were marginally under strength having sustained casualties during the first stages of the Romulan assault giving Camp Kelly a total of 197 additional Marine riflemen to draw on but it was becoming imminently clear that he was going to have to pull back the troops from the FOB on MSR Python or risk them being cut off entirely. Viper Base, as it was now being called, seemed more defensible at this juncture given that it was half again closer to Camp Kelly and the wide roadway of MSR Viper allowed for easier movement and clearer fire lanes with which to support the post.

Trip had been mulling what course of action to take for an hour and a half as further preparations were being made to secure the Camp's twelve mile perimeter. Camp Kelly's walls were high, topped with razor wire and overlooked by fortified towers that allowed for crew served and designated marksman fire to reduce any attempts to clear the seven meter ramparts. Sapper attacks on the wall proper would be all but useless with anything short of a capital grade weapon given their thickness and reinforced construction, the only point of vulnerability lay at the gates. With the exclusion of the main gate on MSR Viper and the two secondary gates on MSR Python and Sidewinder, all the others had been adequately blockaded and were being guarded by a team of Vulcan commandos and indigenous personnel. The bottleneck that would be produced if the Romulans attempted entry would allow the Vulcan to hold the Romulans under murderous fire until a squad of Marines could make it to the position to help repulse the entry attempt. Six platoons currently manned the main gate with four at each of the secondaries, this left him with a seven full strength platoon reserve and three platoons of mixed Vulcan Commandos and Marines split up into squads and sections manning technicals to quickly respond to any breaches at the foot-traffic gates should they come under attack.

"Private, get me Yamabushi on the prick." Tucker declared.

"Aye, sir."

Trip had spent the past six hours alternating between the grinder, various defensive positions, and the COC. He had climbed the stairs in the C2 building at least twenty times and between the exertion of doing so and his extended time under the sun he was feeling more than a little drained.

"Yamabushi, yamabushi, this is black flag, over."

"Yamabushi, go ahead black flag."

"Yamabushi, prepare to receive traffic from Barracuda actual, over."

Trip took the handset and began to speak into it, "Yamabushi, this is Barracuda; RTB, repeat, RTB. I want everyone out of FOB Python and back to Kelly, immediately, over."

"This is Yamabushi actual, Barracuda, we copy, we will be oscar mike in zero five mikes, over."

Trip took a deep breath, glad the Captain had not deigned to argue the point. In the same position he would have been tempted to do so, but Cpt. Musashibo was a good Marine and a smart one and accepted the fact that Tucker had the long-view even if he himself was not privy to it.

"Roger that, Yamabushi, Barracuda out." Trip passed the hand set back to the private.

"You think they're gonna hit us, sir?"

Trip shrugged, knowing the truth of it but feeling a strange compulsion to express less than utter confidence of the face, "Well, they're all ready for a party, would seem a bit strange if they just packed it in and went home now."

"Ever been in a fire fight before, sir? I mean...before landing on Vulcan..." The young man sounded nervous. He had every right to be, this was going to be the big one, or perhaps the first of many big ones, Trip knew no matter what happened, today would be bad.

"I was in a number of major engagements durin' the forty seven war." Trip acknowledged flatly as he once again viewed the defensive positions built around the main gate.

"Oh, well...I meant on the ground, sir." The private sounded a little chagrined.

"I was on the ground, part of the landin' teams. Klingons just loved to try to overrun us once we hit the ground."

"As a comparison, which would you rather be fighting, sir; Romulans or Klingons?"

Trip didn't hesitate in his answer, "Romulans, compared to Klingons these guys are a bunch'a wimps."

Of course Klingons, unlike their Romulan counter-parts, didn't form into units thousands strong to attack, the biggest Klingon force he had ever seen in a single area was a little more than three hundred strong. Current estimates were that there were at least six thousand Romulans within one kilometer of Camp Kelly and of that number at least half were preparing for the assault. Given those kind of numbers he wasn't sure there was much of a difference, especially with artillery being out of the question and any air support missions would be danger-close, once the actual battle began they might refuse to complete attack missions entirely since they would be too far into the six hundred meter "safe distance" from any ordnance dropped.

"Think they'll hit soon, sir?"

Trip looked back over to the private, momentarily annoyed. He wanted to say something snippy, crass; _Nah kid, I think they'll wait about six or seven days then call the whole damn thing off_. Kid, that was the operative word here, he couldn't be a day over twenty, twenty one at the absolute maximum. He was still practically a boy, an armed child here to put smoke on the enemies of Earth and Vulcan courtesy of Military Assistance Command, Vulcan. You knew what you signed up for but you never really _knew_ until shots were fired and war was declared. This was probably the most scared the private had been in his life, but something happened with that fear, until the numbness finally overtook you, everything was sharper, more distinct. Energy, one thousand miles a second, pouring into your system like a tidal wave of little bees buzzing around in your head, your spine, your arms, your crotch; it was like nausea and an orgasm combined and if you had slept enough, eaten enough, drank enough it just built and built until the first sign of contact and then it all turned into furry and the most well focused _fuck-you_ that went down your index finger and sent smoke, hate, and discontent at Mr. John Q. Contact-right. He'd been there, he knew what it was.

"Probably, private. They don't strike me as smart enough to hit us at night, they'll be out in the open where we have clear line'a sight. Hell, if they don't start doin' somethin' I might just walk out there and ask 'em if there's a problem. Just stay near me in case I need'ta get anyone on the prick, oorah?"

"Oorah, sir."

Trip had just started to feel the first twinges of low blood sugar, the last few days had been so busy it wasn't like he really had noticed the effects of hypoglycemia but now pretty much all that could be done to prepare had been done. From where he was now it would take him about five minutes to walk a swift trot to the mess hall and there would surely be something available to eat there. He had not been consuming nearly enough calories lately and that coupled with mild dehydration probably accounted some for the fact he had dropped about fifteen pounds since landing on Vulcan. If he could just figure out a way to get some sun bathing in the next time he saw T'Pol he'd look like a south Florida Adonis. Still, part of him wondered if losing much more weight would be a bad thing as far as T'Pol was concerned. Even when he was really packing away the food he capped out at about 7.5% body fat, owing to the series five gene modification he had inherited from three generations of Tucker men and a series two on his mother's side of the family. He was relatively sure now he was sitting at no more than 3.8% at most, and T'Pol seemed to enjoy his appearance the most when he was sitting at five percent. He had just resolved to ask the private if he'd eaten when someone at FOB Viper went cyclic.

"Looks like its startin', c'mon private, double time!"

* * *

><p>"The furthest Romulan picket ships are ranging one hundred thirty five thousand kilometers from Vulcan, if we drop out of warp at two hundred thousand kilometers we'll have plenty of time to establish battle formations and ensure we have solid targeting telemetry and firing solutions, Captain." Reed stated in that clipped Limey-with-a-bone-to-pick tone that meant he was gearing up for a nice big ass-kick.<p>

"How long until we drop out of warp, mister Mayweather?" Archer inquired.

"At mister Reed's suggestion, two minutes seven seconds, sir." The navigator/pilot replied in a decidedly more friendly sounding no-nonsense tone.

"Hoshi?" The captain turned to the communications officer.

"We are picking up the Vulcan Planetary Information Network general warning broadcast, they system is back on-line."

Archer turned to look at his science officer, when she had come into his ready room three hours earlier and informed him that Trip had told her that he had taken control of the Romulan system and was using it to lock them out he had looked at her like she was having a mental breakdown. The prospect of having to sedate his de facto first officer and send her to her quarters or the sickbay for the opening shots of the battle had left him feeling almost sick inside. He tried to protest her claims calmly, demurely, and diplomatically when she had looked him right in the eye and called him by his first name, something she had never done before. "Jonathan, please, I ask you to trust me now even if you never intend to do so again." And, by God, she was right, the system was back up, or at least aspects of it that had been down when they had first arrived in system eleven days ago.

"Captain, planetary standard time is nineteen twenty one hours in the area of Shi'Kahr and macvee headquarters." T'Pol notified, "Night will be falling in approximately thirty minutes."

"Anything from macvee, Hoshi?" Archer swore at himself in a small mental office that reviewed all his protocol and made note of infractions, he really had to stop calling her by her first name if he was going to address everyone else in proper naval fashion.

"Still too far out for anything to come in on ULF in real time." She replied, totally overlooking his slip up or perhaps accepting it because she always kind of viewed herself as the young lady and occasional trouble maker when it came to him.

"Contact all ships and let them know we will be dropping out of warp two hundred thousand kilometers from planet."

"Aye, sir." She replied and began sending emergency action traffic through the coding protocols to the two task group flotillas.

Jonathan keyed the communications system on his command couch into engineering, "Engineering!"

"This is Kelby, sir."

"We'll be dropping out of warp in a few minutes, the moment we do I want you pushing all the juice you can into combat systems and in-system propulsion, understood?"

"Aye, sir. Engineering is on it!"

He nodded, knowing Kelby couldn't see him but perhaps knowing the engineering vice-commander, would know he was doing so, "Archer, out."

"Sir, all ships acknowledge." Sato called out from her station.

"Set readiness condition one." Archer barked.

"Set readiness condition one, aye!" Reed echoed as the lights dimmed on the bridge.

"Line of departure, twenty seconds." Mayweather called out from his station.

"Make ready." Archer hissed as much to himself as the bridge crew, perhaps even more so to himself, this was it.

He had dodge the bullet in 47, stationed on the _Baron Urt_ as commanding officer of a destroyer patrolling up and down the Tellar-Earth trade corridor to prevent any commerce raiders from the Klingon forces getting at the freighters. Short of the Xindi campaign this was the only other major military action he had been involved in. The fact he had done so well against the Xindi and, indeed, held the entire operation together through what was deemed to be skillful command and sheer willpower meant he could handle this, but he still felt the crippling ache of anticipation and fear in his stomach, somewhere between the desire to vomit up his toe-nails and intense hunger pangs.

Star points went from streaks to individual points as they dropped from high warp to normal space. The flurry of commands began to pour from his mouth as they would from eleven other commanding officers on eleven other ships, all to be aped and confirmed by the respective departments on the bridges as compliance was made. "All ahead, one third!"

"Ahead one, third, aye." Mayweather echoed.

"Shields up, power to hull plating."

"Shields up, power to hull plating, aye." Reed's confirmation.

"Power weapons, lock targeting solutions."

"Weapons powered, lock targeting solutions, aye, sir." Reed again.

"Set inertial dampeners to full."

"Inertial dampeners to full." T'Pol replied.

"Get me, macvee, miss Sato."

"Aye, sir."

"Sir, Romulan picket ships are falling back to their battle group." Reed informed.

"Hold course, steady as she goes, mister Mayweather." Archer replied.

"Aye, sir, holding at one third." The navigator replied, fingers loosening and then tightening again on the control yoke he would utilize to pull the cruiser into the graceful and deft maneuvers he so easily coaxed from the ship.

"Macvee command, macvee command, this is CGX zero one Enterprise, come back over." Hoshi paused, waited the requisite five seconds before speaking again, "Macvee command, macvree command, this is CGX zero one Enterprise, please respond, over."

Silence.

Archer felt a lump forming in his throat, a knot of fear at once boiling and freezing sitting in his lower thoracic like a lump of ice right at his fundus. Were they too late? Was Shi'Kahr lost, was his friend and all the humans on the planet lost? Was Vulcan and its billions of inhabitants already lost and all that could happen now was a long and bloody campaign punctuated by death and misery for the civilians of the world?

"This is black flag, Enterprise, we have solid copy!"

"Black flag, Enterprise, what is your status over?" Hoshi queried.

Sounds of a fire fight momentarily obliterated the sound coming from the ULF transmission, "-did not copy last, say again Enterprise, say again."

"Black flag, what is your SITREP, over." Sato spoke loud and slow to make sure everything was understood over the sounds of battle.

"Enterprise, Black flag, Camp Kelly under heavy assault, Colonel Wayne Shelby whiskey, india, alpha."

"Black flag, who is in command? Over." Hoshi continued as the two flotillas rocketed towards Vulcan and the Romulans as they hastily tried to form combat effective squadrons.

"Enterprise, prepare to receive traffic from Barracuda actual."

"It's 'bout damn time you showed up!" The drawl was unmistakable even over the sound of an intense battle.

"Trip?" Archer exclaimed.

"Roger that, I'm currently n'charge'a this goat rope, sir."

"What's your status?"

"Sir, Romulan ships fifty five thousand kilometers from effective engagement range." Reed interjected.

"We are under heavy assault, second you get the chance we certainly could- Contact left! Contact left!" Trip shouted the words and a series of tapping rifle reports ripped from the speakers of the ship, each feeling like a nail being driven under a finger nail as they literally had to listen to their crewmate friend, and in the case of one officer, lover and soul mate, fighting for his life. The sounds of the close action engagement went on for another ten seconds, each ticking away like it was a life time as seventeen rounds were expended and the sounds of a magazine change and slapping of a slide release, the sharp snap played over the communications system. Another five quick taps and the pronounced proximity clarity faded until all that could be heard was the muted click and thumping bray of weapons not held by the man to whom they had been speaking.

"Trip? Trip? Commander Tucker, respond!" Archer shouted.

Nothing, again, just silence. Archer cut eyes towards T'Pol and saw her breathing raggedly, her nostrils working with each breath as her lips remained tight and her eyes began to shine like tears wanted to well up in them.

Suddenly they heard the muted drawl again, "Aardvark, aardvark, fire mission, pre-plot whiskey niner, whiskey niner, HE airburst, danger close, fire for effect." The communications system crackled as they heard him lifting the hand set back to his head to continue speaking, "Sorry 'bout that. If you get a chance we sure could use Major Hayes and his boys down here at Camp Kelly, they're throwin' four brigades at us right now."

"Who is in overall command, Trip?" Archer demanded, leaning forward, at the edge of his seat, fingers tightened on the arms in a death grip, sweat visibly showing on his brow.

"I'm in command'a the whole Shi'Kahr operations theatre, Camp Kelly is under my command at the moment, seein' as how this is where the fightin' is goin' on, that pretty much makes me the Old Man, sir."

"Can you hold?" He cut eyes back over to T'Pol who had tilted her head slightly towards the sound of her husband's voice.

"I reckon for a while longer anyway, when are you gonna get us some reinforcements down here, I've been tryin' to kill 'em all myself but its turnin' into a pretty tall order." They could hear the lopsided grin, how was he putting a smile on this? But then again, it was Charles Tucker III, and that's just who he was when it was them. His intestines could by lying in a pile on the ground right now and if wouldn't have been for pain in his voice, one would have never been able to tell. Of course he was telling them jokes, he would as long as he could still draw breath and that fact caused a moment of pronounced worry that suddenly seemed to rise like a stench on the bridge.

"Are you alright, Trip? Are you injured?" Archer asked in an even tell-me-the-truth tone.

"I caught a lil shrapnel 'bout an hour ago but nothin' serious."

"How bad is it?"

"Sir, Romulan ships will be in firing range in fifteen seconds." Reed once again updated.

"Just don't make me wear a tie for a few days and I should be just fine."

"Alright Trip, I'm not sure how long we're going to be fighting up here or if we'll be able to get in range to get Hayes' men to you. The remainder of the task group should be here in less than two days, we'll do what we can to buy you time until then, but we're going to have a fight on our hands too." Archer stated with an almost painful stoniness that seemed to be born of the defensiveness of guilt.

"We should be able to hold out that long unless they all start pourin' in at once and if they do that then there'll be not much left of 'em to clean up for the MEUs. I'll just say now if that happens, though; pine box, brass handles." Again the engineer joked.

"You'll have to give that to me in writing when I see you next, commander."

"Alright then, don't y'all do nothin' stupid with my boat, y'understand? If it gets to heavy up there you pull out, don't sit around up there on our account. Standard transport protocols are in place if you get a chance to do a beam-in and if you can pull 'em close to Shi'Kahr we can provide limited support with the planetary defense batteries." Tuckers voice became serious. "I mean it sir, don't you go riskin' my baby! Either'a them!" One last joke.

"Roger that, Trip."

"Barracuda, out."

Archer sat back, "Mister Reed, do you have targeting solutions?"

"Aye, sir."

"You may fire when ready." Archer pronounced.

"With pleasure, sir."


	18. Chapter 18

"Set course three two nine mark three, ahead two thirds." Archer bellowed over the sounds of alarms and the ship's super structure straining as shield generators dumped feed-back energy into dissipation circuits.

The element of surprise had quickly been exhausted as they engaged the Romulan fleet action above Vulcan. The second shock had served to last a little longer as the joint stand-off targeting upgrades made by T'Pol and Reed had allowed the two flotillas to cripple four of the Romulan frigates in the first exchange. In the first pass each of the task groups had managed to put fifteen rounds from the rail gun batteries into an area less than seventy five centimeters across. The damage was absolutely catastrophic, tearing deep into the hulls through multiple decks and bulkheads before the demilitarization charges, meant to destroy stray rounds before they could become interstellar hazards, exploded. Ghastly holes, several decks deep had been opened up on the enemy craft as explosive decompression ripped the small entry wounds open, it was unclear if most of the crew of the four victim ships had been killed outright or if a series of systems failures had done the job, but all four were floating dead in space almost immediately.

On one of the flat wide vessels the rounds had struck and penetrated the bridge, instantly killing the command crew and, presumably, everyone in the CIC. As they engaged the second group of ships, the _Enterprise_ and _Columbia_ groups switched to a combination of phaser emitters and rail gun fire to engage. Many MCS captains eschewed the use of phaser banks or cannons, it took time for them to cause enough feed-back damage to shield systems to allow penetration to the hull, and once they did it would often take multiple hits on an area before enough energy was transferred to allow penetration. Of course when multiple banks all struck the exact same location simultaneously the effect was devastating. Four of the destroyers from The _Columbia's_ Task Force: Gungnir, had all opened fire with phased energy emitter banks on the same Romulan ship, the beams aimed for the dorsal aft quadrant at the point of minimum shield redundancy. The shield emitter itself overloaded with such force that it exploded knocking out the two adjacent emitters in its network. The four ships then placed four more lances of energy right into the part of the ship giving off the reactor bloom. The ship exploded two seconds later, the shockwave and debris clipping it's partner opening it up for a finishing blow from ventral rail gun batteries eight and nine of the _Itō Sukeyuki_.

"Three two nine mark three, ahead two thirds, aye!"

"T'Pol, what's the field status?" Archer barked.

"The venting process has created a fifteen kilometer area saturated at fifty eight hundred parts per million, captain. The zone is ready for ignition."

"Mister Reed, are all allied craft clear of the plasma field?"

"Aye, sir, all ships clear of the field by at least zero five kilometers." Reed's hand was already hovering over the launch command.

"Fire."

"Aye, sir! Firing aft photonic torpedo." Malcolm depressed the key to fire the weapon, an immediately the variable yield projectile ejected from the ship at high speed. The vanguard of five Romulan ships had to have been thinking the shot was horrible aimed and had gone wide as the result of pure incompetence. But if there Romulans had deserved any points for foresight they likely would have wondered why the twelve MCS ships had been circling the same a fixed AO twelve kilometers across and their science officer would have doubtlessly wondered why they were venting de-ionized warp plasma. It ceased to be an issue for operational concern and was relegated to the academic the moment the warhead detonated, the charge was set to high dispersion and relatively low energy; the proverbial torch on the pitch, the warp plasma ionized as electrons were cast outwards, turning the area around the Romulan squadron into a sea of hyper-excited particles that caught the exhaust from their impulse engines and ignited it. The patch of space turned a luminous green as super heated matter worked its way into impulse and warp manifolds causing the respective systems to explode as reaction mass hyper-expanded faster than the systems could vent. A series of sympathetic failures and explosions worked their ways into the reactors of the Romulan vessels and each exploded in short order, bathing the area in radioactive particles and electromagnetic interference as deuterium and anti-deuterium combined in unrestrained nuclear chaos.

Malcolm had to marginalize it, catalogue it in some realm of mental make-believe where each one of the fix destroyed ships didn't contain thirty eight beings that was now dead. This was war, this is what war entailed, but he found himself secretly glad that he didn't have to be the one to pull a trigger and watch the havoc that was rendered on a body by the act. Phasers killed clean, there was a little energy scorching less than skin thickness where a fatal shot landed, serving to darken the skin but there was no blood, no ravaged tissue, just a corpse. Down below on Vulcan, they had to see the result of their craft as bullets ripped through flesh and shattered bone, as explosives blew bodies apart, concussive blast from mortars and artillery divested them of clothing and flung them unceremoniously into impossible contortions that often elicited the macabre jocularity of those who were trying to, similarly, marginalize the horror of it all. He never understood the tendency towards such behavior, always having viewed it as crass, classless, and, just maybe, decidedly American in sensibility until he had been forced to oversee the stacking of Xindi Reptilian bodies after an assault at which point he found himself making quips about fish markets and cord wood. Marginalize, dehumanize, categorize, rationalize; do whatever it takes but keep doing your duty, fight the enemy, win...and once that is done and everyone gets to go home you can have your quiet and secluded mental demolition and hyper-humanize the enemy that wouldn't have hesitated to do the same to you.

"Captain, the remaining Romulan ships are falling back and reforming their lines." T'Pol intoned calmly from her station.

"Damage report." Archer barked, the adrenaline still running high.

"We had EPS conduits explode in section four on Bravo and Charlie decks, no casualties reported." Malcolm replied, glancing over to a damage control report.

"What are their losses?"

"Current scans indicate seven ships destroyed, four more crippled or heavily damaged." T'Pol once again answered.

Archer crossed to the science station and eyed the sensor readings, the Romulans were drawing their battle lines close to the planet. They could move to intercept and fire on any ships attempting planet fall or moving to transporter range but had to hang far enough back to avoid coming into firing range of the planetary defense batteries. If both Flotillas decide to make a run at the gap, the Romulans could wheel around and lay enough fire into them to finish them all off. Despite the overwhelming superiority of the MCS ships in terms of raw fire power, the group as it stood has no hopes of being able to fight off the better part of forty enemy craft. As things stood now, they could adequately bloody the Romulans' collective nose with small unit and picket actions. They could whittle them down, five, seven, even ten at a time until there was no Romulan fleet left with little fear of attrition taking its toll, but if twenty Romulan ships were to attack at once... The CGX cruisers could sustain engaging two to three at a time with virtual impunity. The destroyers and Frigates were about a match one for one against the main Romulan combatant craft, but two or three attacking a single destroyer would quickly result in the Earth ship's crippling and subsequent destruction. The weight of numbers could change the dynamic so utterly that it was difficult to fully wrap one's mind around it. The enemy could go from hapless targets to expedient vacuum funeral just a quickly as they order "fire" could be given.

The part of T'Pol that was Vulcan saw the strategic development as desirable, they had forced the Romulans into a pocket where they were unable to maneuver as anything short of a whole. With this in mind both task groups could stay ahead of any attempts by the enemy to bring their bulk of forces online for a counter attack. However, the part of T'Pol that was the wife of a human fighting for his life on the planet below agonized over the fact that _Enterprise_ would not be able to move into a position where they could beam down Hayes' vitally important MARSOC Marines to help relieve the beleaguered Camp Kelly. Her inability to feel Trip through the bond bothered her now, perhaps, more than any other time because she fully realized how imminent the danger he faced was and was suddenly without any recourse or capacity for amelioration. As much as she understood he was equipped physically and mentally to be a fighter, it was not in his nature and the fact he was now effectively in command of the fighting planet side put him far and painfully out of his element. She felt the illogical temptation to suggest that if they were able to move into position to beam down Hayes' contingent that they beam Commander Tucker up as he could better benefit _Enterprise_ than she felt he could assist in MAC-V's operations on Vulcan. If only she could somehow feel his presence, touch his mind she would know for certain if that would be the correct decision or not. Maybe if she had a moment to meditate she could force her way to his mind, perhaps use the body consciousness to finally reach him and, through pure will, drag that connection back into her normal consciousness.

_Trip._

She probed, forcing her focus away from the science console for a moment and to all her recollections of what it felt like being connected to him telepathically. For a moment it was as if some phantom sensation teased her; colors, shades, his smell, his feel, his taste, she couldn't be certain whether it was in idle recollection or the vestiges of their episode in the body consciousness many hours earlier.

"They're holding position, it doesn't appear they're moving to stay geo-synchronous with Shi'kahr." Archer muttered, pulling T'Pol from her pseudo-meditation.

"If that's true, we can move into transporter range in an hour and be clear of their fire." Reed commented.

"Start making preparations mister Reed." Archer gave a cursor nod.

"Aye, sir. Be nice to save the day, maybe that way we won't have to listen to bloody Semper Fidelis endlessly playing during the entire Victory Parade."

"Not a fan of Sousa, mister Reed?" Archer cocked a brow with the first traces of an impending grin.

"Its just so bloody..." Reed paused as if unsure of what he would say next, finally giving in knowing it would definitely be a mark against him with at least a third of the bridge crew including the Captain and XO when she got back, the ribbing he would suffer would be intense and prosecuted with the strangely anachronistic pseudo-nationalistic pride that was still common on Earth, "...American, sir."

"I like Semper Fidelis, its jaunty." Hoshi chimed in unbidden, then looking up from her console with a deathly serious expression. "Sir, Camp Kelly is getting hit very hard, they've started calling for danger close air strikes within the city proper."

Archer frowned at what he perceived as a pause, she had finished talking but he knew her well enough to realize there was something else that needed to be said, something she was reluctant or afraid to reveal. It was a child's fear, don't tell "dad" something he doesn't want to hear, and her expression said the she understood that it was counter-intuitive, but there was another consideration that was not completely clear. Archer didn't have time for twenty questions, Hoshi would just have to put it out there and let everyone deal with it whatever it may be.

"Well...?"

"Sir, casualties are mounting, forty one marines dead, sixty two wounded, Commander Tucker..." Hoshi paused a moment, "Commander Tucker has been injured."

T'Pol jerked visibly as he breath caught high in her chest, her eyes becoming large and expressive, lips pouting as they were prone to do when she found emotions hard to suppress. This was exactly why she hadn't wanted to say anything. Of course she had a hard time dealing with it, Vulcan or not, you didn't suddenly steal her husband away, drop him into a combat zone on a suicide mission then return over a week later to find him still alive but in a far worse situation than you had dropped him in, in the first place. Hoshi was certain that if their situations had been reversed they would have to be sedating her right now.

"How bad is it?" Archer demanded, the implication that he was referring to Tucker relatively clear.

"He was struck on the left side, high on the clavicle, the damage that was not absorbed by his body armor seemed to have transferred mostly into his shoulder. He is in incredible pain, but..." T'Pol began speaking as if almost in a trance like state, "...he is refusing to leave the line."

"Get me Camp Kelly." Archer snapped, his voice emphatic, brokering no dissent.

"Black Flag, Black Flag, this is Enterprise, come back, over."

* * *

><p>Trip grimaced, a pained growl leaving his throat as the corpsman slowly and carefully peeled the carbonized pieces of uniform from his shoulder, taking the top layer of skin along with it in places. The first sensation he had experience when he had been hit was the smell; as the thermal-electric fabric layer melted it had been the pungent acrid smell of cooking plastics that seared the inside of his nose only to give way dully oppressive odor of ozone and the sickly sweet of human flesh and blood burning. The sensation followed almost immediately, the energy that had been dissipated by the body armor crawling up his neck in a tingling sensation as the muscles tightened from the electrical component of the disrupter bolt, then the pain hit as the still functioning nerves in the shoulder began warning his brain of the injury. It was easily more painful than the Bat'leth injuries had been, and he felt sympathetic twinges of nausea as muscles throughout his body tightened in cramping pulses as the toxins of dead tissue and residual radiation damage entered his blood stream.<p>

"Give me somethin' for the blood toxicity and slap a bandage on it and get me back in this." Trip growled as his brain began ordering adrenaline to be dumped into his system.

"Sir, you need to get to the aid station..." The Corpsman stared at him in disbelief, "This is a potentially critical injury."

"I ain't got time for the aid station, we're gettin' murdered out here and we need a commandin' officer that knows what's goin' on! Now patch me up corpsman and give me whatever you can to keep me movin', is that understood?" Tucker retorted venomously.

"Aye aye, sir." The medic grudgingly replied as he prepped a hypo with antibiotics, blood cleaners, and a pain killer.

Private Carillo was still trying desperately to explain to the aid station that the command level casualty would not be joining them and, no, he was not dead when a secondary signal beeped into the communications device he carried on his back. The private seemed flustered, annoyed, and Trip could vaguely hear his irritation playing through his voice as he spoke into the hand set even though he could not hear the actual words themselves.

"Sir, Enterprise is on the prick, they want to speak to you."

Trip groaned, "If its not about them gettin' me reinforcements or the star goin' supernova I don't need t'hear about it right now."

He pushed his back against the wall at which he had propped himself and with pure willpower lifted himself, his back sliding up the wall surface as his boots dug into the earth to move him back into an upright position.

"Enterprise, Barracuda requests to know nature of the inquiry, over." The private shrugged at Tucker as if to say _What do you want me to say_. "Roger, roger, copy that. Sir, they want to inquire about your status, they heard you were injured over our traffic and the science officer indicated you had been struck by enemy fire."

"T'Pol..." Trip was startled, how had she known? He suddenly could sense the faint feelings of concern, fear, and worry almost as if they were subtle emotions of his own. Somehow the bond seemed to be working, but it was like listening to music through a wall, only part of it carried through as a muffled perception of particularly loud or pronounced notes. Had she felt the sensations in strangely distorted tones just as he was feeling her mental anguish now? "Tell them I'm fine, I'm injured but I'm combat effective, and if its not too much trouble I'd like to go back to makin' sure we don't get overrun."

Carillo relayed the Commanders words with a good bit more diplomacy than Trip had managed in his delivery, points for the young man being quick witted for certain. Again whatever was said left him with an exasperated expression, the kind of sick defeated look of the middle man whose efforts equally dissatisfied everyone despite his best efforts at the opposite.

"Sir..." The Private gave him a defeated look.

"Gimme it." Trip held out his right hand while the corpsman began affixing a bandage to his seeping left shoulder, taking hold of the handset he held it to his ear. "Hoshi, this thing broadcastin' to the bridge?"

"Roger that, Barracuda."

"Alright then." This was his chance to buck the chain of command, technically, under MCS ROE he was in charge of the entire Vulcan operations theatre and had situational supperiority in all regards concerning the planet, which meant his concerns outweighed and outranked Captain Archers, "This better be about my reinforcements."

"Negative, we heard reports you were injured..." Archer didn't even get to finish, Trip felt his face turn red and he tried with whatever willpower he had remaining to keep from screaming into the hand-set, instead his voice just came out clipped and with a hint of a growl.

"Cap'n, in case you didn't pay attention in the last conversation, we're fightin' our asses off down here and are a lil' busy so if it ain't somethin' to help me do my job or keepin' more Marines from gettin' killed, stow it and get your ass off my comms, understood?"

There was a moment of silence, at least part of his reaction had been tempered by the fact the physical pain he was in already had his patience wearing dangerously thin. He was almost certain he would catch it when he got back to the ship, but he defied any Courts Martial to find him guilty of insubordination in the wake of this, should he manage to survive. Forget a captain's mast, if it came down to it he would request a Court Martial just to justify himself, he wouldn't settle for even the lightest NJP in regards to this one.

"I said is that understood?" Trip barked again.

"Roger that, Barracuda, we copy." Archer replied in a somewhat cowed voice.

"T'Pol, muhl nash-veh. Barracuda out." Tucker all but tossed the hand-set back to Carillo and began looking around, several senior non-comms and junior officers were near the communications tent that they had moved onto the grinder and fortified with sand bags. Trip took a deep breath and bellowed "Lieutenant Gayle, front and center!"

"Sir...lieutenant Gayle is dead, sir."

Trip's eyes locked on the corpsman's face, wide with disbelief. Gayle was the kind of guy who didn't die, he may have seemed like a bit of a weasel garrison concierge, but he was a good kid or at least seemed to be. He had gotten the distinct feeling that Gayle was the type that wanted to learn from the best, to ascend the ranks and be a competent staff level officer. He would never be a marine's marine, but he would have turned into the sort that was fair and knowledgeable and understood when to shut up and listen to the grunts. It had to be a mistake.

"I saw him forty five minutes ago..." He found his voice weaken, like suddenly the anger that was propelling him through the trauma of the injury had suddenly popped a drain plug and run out of him and into the dirt where it was soaked up, lost, and gone away.

"During that last big push on the gate, he rounded up some guys from H and S and took them over to the gate to reinforce, he was hit in the head by a disrupter while he was dragging an injured marine back from the fighting positions."

"Sonuva..." Trip pulled his helmet off, not entirely sure why, it suddenly felt like a thousand splinters of glass slicing into his scalp. He wanted to throw it as an outlet for frustration. His body armor seemed to bite, his fatigues seemed to chafe, where rifle sling pressed against his fatigue blouse seemed to burn. The bleak feelings he had experienced from T'Pol just magnified his feeling of frustration and despair. As his own feelings projected back to her through the pseudo-bond they intensified and the feeling began to magnify, it was like lighting a candle in a room full of mirrors, each time it reflected it created more light, more copies of itself, until from utter blackness there was a sickly orange-yellow glow. He wasn't entirely sure why but he felt a wash of grief, like the rage that had drained away had just been a prelude to a light flood of sorrow. It seemed to pool around his feet, washing over the toes of his boots, like a heavy-raid flash-flood that ruined carpets but little else. Still, it was as if he felt something in him was broken, unable to deal with the sudden feeling of grief at losing Lieutenant Gayle and the ripples of sorrow threatened as the precursor to a tidal wave.

_Humans are equipped for this, we have a weapon for our defense._ Emotions as proxies, substitute for a similar product; full up on despair? Convert it to resentment, anger, and fury for triple the return. Take anything you can, any stimuli, any memory or thought and stick it into the furnace to build the heat. It was a steam engine and its pressure would build and build until bolts popped and metal bands snapped, and for most people it would explode in a dangerous omnidirectional cataclysm of outward and inwardly focused destruction. But he knew its tricks, its secrets, it was like controlling fire with back burning and shifting material; it could eat you alive but you could tease and coax it to do what you wanted it to. Just like in a steam engine, the most deadly amount of pressure could be precisely focused to do massive amounts of work and when the pressure was highest, the possible amount of work that could be done was at its greatest. It was power, pure, elemental, primeval power and he knew where he wanted it directed. But, not yet, it wasn't quite time, best to let the pressure build a little more then he would loose it and when he did the heavens would roar, the earth would quake, and let God, the Marines, Vulcan, and most of all, the Romulans, see why you didn't back a south Florida boy into the corner.

Trip was barely aware of the protests of the corpsman as he pulled away and began walking to the communications tent. He counted nine non-essential personnel in the immediate area, and none of them seemed particularly intent on any given activity. It was one step above malingering, doping off, trying to stay out of the suck and hoping that being near a command level asset would convince anyone around that they were still working, still part of the combat operation in progress.

"What kind of gaggle-fuck is this?"

"Officer on deck!"

The marines snapped to attention saluting. They knew they had been caught, now they just had to come up with the stories to cover their asses with, his face was indication enough that he was angry, his words hadn't been said in jest or as a sort of "gotcha" he let every ounce of venom he could seep into the words without threatening to burn off some of the rage he was bottling up. These were infantry officers and NCOs and here they were standing around like it was a work coffee social while a staff officer who had no business near the fighting lay dead for trying to do their jobs for them.

"As you were! Now, I asked a question."

"Sir, we are inquiring after air support, sir." A sergeant major with a lifer-face and thick neck that seemed to merge into a ruddy skin and a dull, protocol-numbed expression.

"I see three second lieutenants, a first lieutenant, two master gunnery sergeants, two first sergeant and a sergeant major. Last I checked it didn't take a goddamn committee to inquire about air support." Trip turned to look at one of the second lieutenants, he looked like a pampered kid who was planning on running for office some day and figured he could use the military card as a way to earn some voter support. His expression was sour and dismissive, his eyes made momentary contact and all Trip could see in the junior officer's eyes was derision. "What's your story, what are you doin' here?"

"I'm _injured_, sir." He almost spat the words, there was some inflection in his voice, an accent that Trip couldn't place but it just made him dislike the kid more. He reeked of money and privilege, having had everything handed to him in life and assuming that taking a posting with MAC-V would have guaranteed him political favor in a few years when he first entered the political arena.

"Really? Where?"

The lieutenant opened his mouth to sputter a feeble reply, the bluff hadn't worked. Maybe he had rolled his ankle or gotten a splinter in his hand, neither of which would be cause to keep him out of action at this of all times.

Trip pulled his face inches from the junior officers, his lips curled back as he hissed through exposed teeth, "Who is your CO?"

"I am, sir." The heavily accented voice came from behind.

Tucker turned on his heel to see the dark tanned central east Asiatic features and captain's bars. He was a handsome young man, rugged and confident looking with several days worth of accrued stubble and piercing eyes giving a sense of age to an otherwise boyish face. A quick shift of the eyes revealed his name; Musashibo, this was the present-day Benkei, and he seemed to radiate the aura of confidence and danger the ancient semi-mythical warrior monk must have over a thousand years ago. In a delightful flare for the anachronistic or a blatant attempt to play into the stereotype he actually had a daito strapped to his back; it was long looking to be right around three and three quarters shaku in total length from kissaki to kashira. The grenade pins still hanging from clips on his LBE were a good enough indicator of exactly how much fighting he had been doing. He almost reeked of cordite and sweat, empty magazine pouches and the staccato clapping sound of the remaining magazines in partially emptied pouches indicating he had been doing more than his fair share of fighting. His rifle was matted in the fine Vulcan dust and dirt, on his side-arm it was positively embedded in the texture of the grip and on the nylon sheaths of both his combat knife and tomahawk.

The younger Japanese officer snapped to attention and saluted sharply, prompting Tucker to return the gesture. "As you were, Cap'n."

"Aye, sir. I'm glad to see you weren't injured critically."

"Well, not bad enough to take me totally out of it yet." Tucker nodded, the irritation at the loafers still coloring his demeanor.

"With your permission sir, I'll police my men." He cut eyes over at a few of the present recalcitrant personnel with an expression that was perhaps only a few joules shy of being able to melt armor.

"Carry on, Cap'n."

Trip allowed himself the moment to watch as Musashibo lay into his subordinates in his own unique way. He stared them up and down, not saying a word. There was something downright menacing about the younger officer, he couldn't have been more than twenty six but he carried himself like he had been a Marine since the day he was born, he positively oozed series five augmentee. The only sound to leave him was a throaty worded growled from almost under his breath, then, with a short pause, shouted a four syllable phrase Trip didn't recognize, clearly Japanese on the basis of its syllable formation, and three of the assembled Marines including the smart-mouth 2LT immediately fell out. Trip nodded, it was clear the Japanese company commander had a powerful command presence and his word was readily construed as law among his subordinates. The Captain turned back to Tucker and snapped back to attention.

"I apologize for my men's behavior, sir. I will accept full responsibility and accept any discipline you deem necessary." His voice was loud and emphatic and seemed to illustrate genuine contrition for what he viewed as his own failure to adequately control those under him.

"Don't worry 'bout it, Cap'n. It's their failin' not yours. Don't think there is a man in Shi'kahr that could call you anything less than a model marine." Trip replied.

"Thank you, sir. I came looking for you initially to inform you a Vulcan named Suvak with MCS equipment, and his contingent came through a foot access gate with his cadre at position secured by mean from third platoon six minutes ago, sir."

"How many were with him?" Trip inquired, a pit of new fear forming in his stomach.

"Four humans in indigenous clothing, seven MARSOC marines, fourteen Vulcan local force commandos, according to the report sir."

Trip felt a sudden wash of relief, and it strangely made Lieutenant Gayle's death seem that much more bitter and hard to grasp, "They all made it back. Thank God."

"I assumed you would want to debrief them sir, they're currently at my CP."

"Could you have them brought here? I don't really have time to conduct a full fledged debriefing, we've gotta get something on line to hit 'em back. We can't give 'em a minute to regroup or get a regimental sized unit in an adequate readiness posture to hit the main gate. Maybe get some of the crew served weapons emplaced where we can shoot right down their throat."

"We could harden two of the fighting positions and install a pair of M fives, sir." Musashibo offered. The heavy machine guns had been chewing up the Romulans, but mounted as they were in the towers, the enemy would eventually achieve defilade and walking the fire into them from above had not had nearly as devastating an effect as laying it into them at waist and chest level from ground positions.

"Was exactly what I was thinkin'."

"Sir? Air wing says it can provide CAS if we can get IR flares on the MSR to provide a target position." It was the red faced Sergeant Major.

Tucker turned to the NCO with a slightly abashed expression and a sheepish hint of a grin which quickly disappeared as another surge of pain from his left shoulder hit him, "If you could, sergeant major, head on over to the Weapons company boys and see if they can get somethin' rigged up to drop IR flares with the mortars, but hold off on firin' any of 'em until we really need close air. I'd prefer to not flatten half'a Shi'kahr if possible. And, uh...sorry 'bout earlier, Sergeant Major."

"I'd have thought I was a pogue gaffing off, too. By your leave, sir?"

"Carry on."

"Sir," Captain Musashibo drew Tucker's attention back, "Should I have them meet you at the combat triage tent?"

"Negative, Cap'n, I'm not goin' one step towards the tent until we're at one hundred percent. We need an aggressive defensive posture and I fully intend to make sure next time they hit us will force 'em to rethink this whole operation."

"Sir, shouldn't we at least have a boxsee come take a look at the injury?" The younger Japanese officer inquired, the colloquial term for doctors among the Marines dated back to the 1960s. It was probably the first time Trip had heard the captain sound informal.

"The Corpsman gave me somethin' for it, I'll just have to make do for now." Trip rubbed the arm near his elbow, in spite of the analgesic the pain level was fairly intense, almost as if his finger nails were trying to burrow up into his hands and he had powdered glass in his brachial artery, but he could function in spite of it. With each spike of pain he could almost feel T'Pol's concern and fear. He wished he could just communicate with her, let her know it was just pain that he was alright, but he couldn't even adequately determine if his physical discomfort was the source of her worry or if things were going bad in the space above. If only he could project his thoughts back, do something to calm her growing sense of panic.

In many ways it was confusing to him, he had expected her to be the calmest one on the ship. There was nothing that could be served by fear, it was illogical for her to worry as it served no purpose; it didn't contribute to her focus or precision, indeed for a Vulcan the strong barely suppressed emotion would only lessen her effectiveness. He couldn't grasp how she would possibly be suffering from such pronounced apprehension, for a Vulcan it should have all been matter-of-fact and easily quantifiable; he was in a dangerous situation fighting a numerically superior enemy, the likelihood that he could be injured should have been a foregone conclusion. Did all Vulcans feel this way about their mates or was he somehow special? Of course not, he wasn't the one that was special, singular, unique...it was T'Pol that was the peculiarity. She had _chosen_ a human as a mate, _chosen_ to develop the bond, _chosen_ to become pregnant with a half-human child. She was unique in that she had decided to care that much and to share her life with an emotionally tumultuous human who likely strained her mental reserves daily. Reinforcements were less than 2 days way now, he just had to make sure Camp Kelly was still standing, and then he could see her again. See her face, look in her eyes, he didn't even think he would have anything snarky to say when they reunited. It was weird to be reflecting on how deeply and elementally he wanted to be with her given the situation he was in now. Survive, that was the imperative, survival for himself and the remaining marines and Camp Kelly and, by proxy, Shi'kahr and Vulcan. Make the sacrifice of Gayle and Shelby and Gaddson and all the marines whose names he did not yet know but would likely stay with him forever, mean something and count for something in the long run. In the short term it was ridiculous metaphysical tripe, sacrifice, why sacrifice? Why couldn't they have just survived, then it wouldn't have been a sacrifice, it would have been skilled performance of duty. Live men didn't get nearly as many medals as dead ones, but he hadn't met the fool yet who would rather die to get a higher award or honor than the guy who made it through.

"Here they are, sir." Musashibo declared, breaking through Trip's revelry.

Suvak looked tired, or perhaps, concerned and Trip couldn't decide which option worried him more. The Vulcan didn't look any worse for the wear, nor did the team he had walked out with hours earlier, that was at least a small mercy. The Vulcan agent didn't bother with the pretense of pleasantries of greeting or acknowledgement, he came right to the point in a way that was decidedly Vulcan but managed to be presented in a manner that seemed human.

"Commander Tucker, it is worse that we had initially believed, they have four divisions mustering to attack, we might have to abandon Shi'kahr." His voice was barely reserved, he was worried, apprehensive, maybe even scared.

"Four divisions all deployed to attack us?" Trip sounded almost incredulous.

"All the Romulan forces we observed were mustering into positions along MSRs Python, Viper, and Cobra to attack, we can likely expect a full fledged assault at dawn." Suvak seemed to be hoping the news would prompt Tucker to consider evacuation options. But when the human began to grin a strange predatory smile, a strange deadness in eyes that still managed to twinkle, like he was looking into the eyes of some vengeful god, he couldn't help but swallow past a sudden tightness in his throat.

"Good, we got 'em all in one place, that'll make killin' 'em all that much easier."


	19. Chapter 19

Valek gazed across the casualty collection point in unvarnished horror. The carpeting was a bog of green blood as medics and doctors flitted between one soldier and another, almost at a total loss as how to deal with it all. These humans were barbarians to be certain. Why would a race as skilled in the ways of war as them still seek to use ballistic fire weaponry? It was clear, because they were brutal and callous and they clearly reveled in the suffering of their foes. Their projectiles were ferocious and capricious, at times they penetrated and exited cleanly, other times they opened horrific exit wounds as flesh almost exploded creating gapping avulsions. Heads would explode, organs would pulp, bones would snap. He saw one soldier struck in the chest have the round exit out his back just above the buttock, he had died before they could even get the blood volume expander in him. The projectile in question had destroyed his left lung, liver, and right kidney. In some situations it seemed that the soldiers had borne back their comrades instinctively as some were missing entire halves of their heads, brains all but completely spilled in the street where they were hit.

The medical staff was at a loss as how to treat these types of injuries. Stab wounds were one thing, explosion wounds another, and energy weapon discharges were relatively simple, this was almost like a combination of the three. Even when the exit wounds were small, the tissue inside the wound track and for up to fifteen centimeters on either side of the wound track was practically pulped as the flesh and organs were stretched beyond its failure point by the quickly moving projectile. Even those that hadn't been killed outright were dying at an alarming rate. So far the casualty survival rate was only about twenty percent, and those that did were combat ineffective. His century was down to fifty three men, of the other three in the cohort, one was at seventy five percent casualties, or which almost all were dead. Sub-Commander Surat himself had been injured in the last assault when an airburst round exploded literally at chest height of the soldier in front of their commander. The hapless trooper had absorbed enough of the energy to keep Surat from being killed, but the subordinate had been turned into the shrapnel that had injured his commanding officer. Valek watched in a combination of disgust, remorse, and pity as a medical assistant pulled the fragments of bone piece by piece from the commander's cheek. He shuddered imagining what it must be like to have bits and pieces of one of your soldiers stuck into you like needles. How could one ever feel truly clean after that? The bone pierced, the flesh pelted, cartilage and fat and blood heated to scalding temperatures as hyper-expanding gas blew the body to bits covered in a stinging sticky mist. You actually inhaled some of the dead, the aerosolized tissue and fluids entering the lungs, a strange sweetly metallic odor that made you gag when you realized what it was. Surat would never be the same, physically or mentally; the physical scars would be small, barely perceivable, but the feeling of being unclean would never lead him.

What was worse was it was impossible to tell if they were managing to kill any of the humans. They all looked the same except for subtle variances in skin color, all in camouflaged uniforms with thick armored vests that could absorb disruptor hits and helmets that made them even hard to differentiate between. And the Vulcans with them in their fortification...they fought with almost equal fervor. The only point of hope was in the fact that it seemed that both the human government and the Vulcan High Command had effectively abandoned the world. At warp five it would take weeks for a relief force to arrive to relieve the besieged fortress and drive them out of Shi'kahr. Of course that was provided the humans and Vulcans all killed every last Romulan on the planet first. Valek grit his teeth at how badly the generals misinterpreted human combat effectiveness. Rumors had indicated that the expeditionary force was already down eleven thousand soldiers, the failure of the Tal'shiar to ensure the integrity of the dampening system had allowed the various outlying fortifications of the humans to be assisted from the air. And the artillery...it was a nightmare, it was a blessing that they seemed to be under its umbrella now and would be spared the effect of the big guns, but the mortars seemed to be more than adequate to bring suffering on the infantry.

Since they took positions outside the main roadway into the fort the previous morning the 219th Legion had sustained nine hundred eighty two casualties total, one cohort had been killed to a man, and it would just get worse as the day progressed and wore into night. The humans either had a device that allowed them to see in low light or, perhaps, they were naturally equipped to see in the dark. The Remans could see well in the dark, but the bright bolt or beam of a disruptor caused mild to severe flash disorientation that made fighting at night complicated, it all but blinded Romulan soldiers as the bright beam momentarily burned a dark streak on the retina. They had to close their eyes before pressing the firing stud to avoid being almost totally blinded, it reduced their accuracy significantly and given the nature of their weapons had the added drawback of alerting the enemy to the firer's position. The last assault had revealed another addition to the human defensive plan. In the towers they had large emplaced weapons, rapid fire guns that fired a projectile large enough to rip limbs off, explode torsos and pass through multiple soldiers at a time. Valek had always believed his people were martial and had achieved excellence in the techniques and equipment of war but these humans had devices that were so ridiculously complicated in concept, primitive in implementation, and elegant in effect that it was impossible to fathom what minds could have produced them.

Upon noticing him Surat attempted to smile at Valek, but all he managed was a sick and tired grimace that seemed a hollow and lifeless death contortion more than anything else. The Centurion recognized it for what it was intended to be and nodded to his commander, as a medic ran a dermal regenerator over the wounds on his face. It almost seemed ridiculous that they would spend this much time attempting to repair the officer despite the comparative superficiality of his injuries. Valek realized, though, it was not as result of his rank or social status in the empire but merely because they _could_ do something about his wounds, for many of the others they lacked the wherewithal to begin dealing with such catastrophic wounds. Surat waited until the medic was finished then rose from the cot, grabbing his disruptor rifle and nodded to his most trusted subordinate, following him out of the casualty collection point and back to the cohort headquarters, his face determined but the dread of the assault he knew would be ordered for the dusk hours coming forth like a keening wail from his eyes.

* * *

><p>The night had been good to them, and as Trip sunk to the ground, back against the gradually sharply sloped wall of the C2 building he finally had the time to focus on how much every inch of him seemed to hurt. The analgesics had worn off some time about five hours prior, and for the first time since being treated by the corpsman he had enough time to focus on exactly how badly it hurt. If there had been anything in his stomach it likely wouldn't have been so anymore as he felt an overwhelming feeling of nausea. As a precaution he had the M-5 14.5mm machine guns emplaced at each of the camp's gates in case the Romulans tried to hit along a different MSR. Throughout the night they had probed time and time again, occasionally rushing with demi-company sized unit only to be savagely beaten back. The main assault had come against the main gate in a series of four pushes that started at around 0330 and lasted until 0819. The marines had done a phenomenal job and by some miracle they hadn't lost a man, there were injured, about fifty in total, but even they had walked to the aid station under their own power. MSR Viper was something out of Russian novel, bodies intact and shattered littered up and down its length out to the Tav'Sal'Nava a kilometer and a half away. He had to keep reminding himself that the green soak ground meant blood and not the after-affect of some colossal, towering St. Patrick's glut of bacchanalia.<p>

A shadow to his right caught his attention and he turned to see Suvak approaching with a bowl and cup in hand. The Vulcan stopped and in a graceful motion lowered himself to the ground, handing the bowl over to Tucker. "They made hot food, Commander. They want to make sure everyone gets a decent meal, you really should eat something."

Trip realized that at least part of the nausea he was experiencing was from extreme hunger and he took the bowl, the smell of the food at once making his mouth water and causing him to almost retch. Suvak had thrown together an abridged sandwich out of egg and sausage between two pieces of wheat toast.

"So what ever became of the MARSOC company that we were supposed to get from Enterprise?" The operative inquired.

"Romulan warships moved to cut off their approach last night, currently they're both at stand-off range playin' cat and mouse 'cept nobody is precisely sure who is who." Trip took a bite of the sandwich and leaned back again, chewing slowly as the pain in his shoulder seemed to momentarily lessen as his brain began releasing seratonin and endorphins. It was good, or he was just really hungry, he wasn't entirely sure which was the case but he was thankful for the energy it would provide him for a while anyway.

"How is your shoulder?"

"It's holdin' up. Hurts like hell, but I still have at least seventy five percent functionality, it ain't gonna keep me out of any fire fights, that's for sure."

"You are not concerned with the potential of infection of permanent damage?" Suvak was managing to sound slightly more Vulcan now, not that he didn't always sound Vulcan, the tones and inflections dry and neutral, but is was what he said as opposed to how he said it that often served to make him seem more...human.

"If we don't make it through the next thirty two hours, its not really gonna matter one way or the other." Trip took another bite, chewing and carefully nibbling his way around a piece of gristle in the sausage.

"It would be logical to conscript able bodied civilians to provide additional personnel, the marines have been fighting hard for nearly two weeks now with very little sleep."

Trip shook his head, dismissing the idea as a matter of course, "Suvak, men like you and me know the kind of horrors we're in for. We sign up for it, I can't ask or make any of those people in there do anything like what we've had to do."

Suvak nodded slowly, "That is a reasonable assessment, an emotional one, but very reasonable. No, I suppose you are right, most of them would not be able to adequately process the emotional toll of this battle. The fighting was ferocious, and while it had not yet transitioned to close quarters fighting as of yet, it was almost bound to do so as the Romulan desperation level grew and ability of MCS to reinforce diminished until there was a single desperate explosion as both sides suddenly realized that it was all or nothing and the degree of hopelessness on both sides reached parity.

"Any idea how V'Til's men are holdin' up? I imagine they've gotta be pretty exhausted at this point."

"They appear to be functioning well as can be expected. They have not had to endure the brunt of the fighting so far and seem genuinely impressed with the way our...the marines, are faring." Suvak commented, the slip seemingly the result of his personal identification with MCS more than his own people.

Trip nodded, he began to have the sneaking suspicion that there was more to this conversation that met the eye. "What's on your mind, Suvak?"

"Well, sir, as section chief for Vulcan I'd like to see you get your wound checked before the next attack. Earth's interests, as much as Vulcan's, would be best served by ensuring you are well enough to continue to command. I believe it would be an inexcusable loss if you were to succumb to infection or complications at this juncture."

"Butterin' me up to send me to the docs, huh?" Trip allowed a bit of a smirk.

"Not precisely, I assumed, correctly, that you required sustenance."

Tucker chuckled to himself, "Sounds just like somethin' my wife would say."

"I am of the opinion that humans in general would function better if they all had a Vulcan to look after their best interests." Suvak cocked a brow in the Vulcan equivocation of a smirk.

"On the note of Vulcans, I want to put a plan in place for ease of implementation should we need to evacuate the civilians from the garrison if things should take a turn for the worse."

"I will see to it that the proper individuals are assembled to facilitate institution of the plan." Suvak rose from where he had been squatting, "In the interstice I believe it would be logical for you to retire to the aid station to ensure your wound is properly cleaned, commander."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea." Trip drew his feet back and pushed himself upward, grunting slightly as he did, legs filing a formal protest and threatening to begin a full fledged work stoppage if their breaks were not properly honored. Reaching over he grabbed his assault rifle and put the sling over his neck and right shoulder, leaving the weapon hanging in front of him, as he closed his right hand around the worn and still-warm pistol grip.

As he crossed the parade grounds to the closest aid tent knots of marines ate, slept, and cleaned their weapons under the partial cover of camo netting. They all looked exhausted, but there was a subtle almost dangerous energy about them; operating somewhere between desperation, exhaustion and righteous rage they were ready to end any fight that was started quickly and brutally. Marines lived on self-privation, the budget MCS enjoyed was huge and the marines were equipped and supplied well, better than all but a few of the United Earth Republic self defense armies but they regulated themselves ensuring they never knew excess and never became too comfortable. The result was that MCS Marines were like well trained, well disciplined pit-bulls; obedient, diligent and polite until the hand was raised against their masters at which point their attack was fascinating in its efficiency, power, and ferocity.

As he passed a marine would cry out a fire-watch officer in pass call and the men would stand and salute briskly. Trip knew what it meant, what it signaled. In most situations most people would view it as a tyrannical adherence to protocol and custom, in reality it was a gesture of respect, he had earned their respect and beyond their obedience that was all he could ever want from them. He had already heard the scuttlebutt about the crazy engineer, MARSOC trained, special forces pedigree, an ice man, cold killer, force of nature and/or God bringing vengeance and righteous ass-kick on the bad guys. It was exaggerated, blown out of proportion, and maybe just a little insulting, but it was good for morale because it meant their new commander had his shit squared away and wasn't about to let any Romulan army get the better of MAC-V. The more colorful rumors running around regarding the nature of his relationship with a certain Vulcan crewmember of _Enterprise_ had been mercifully kept from him as he was relatively certain he would have been honor bound to set the record straight in regards to that one.

Entering the aid station he was immediately greeted by a Vulcan male with graying hair and a solemn expression. He didn't speak, simply looked at the bandage on the shoulder and indicated a cot with an out stretched hand. Trip idly wondered if his medical ability was at least better than his non-existent bedside manner. Then again, he was a Vulcan and for his people medical concerns were matter-of-fact and bereft of the additional emotional investment humans always seemed to attach to something as cut-and-dry as seeking medical attention. The tent was mercifully empty, he didn't want the full extent of his injury known to the marines, a leader had to seem a little invulnerable and immune to the realities of injury. Tucker pulled off his helmet and un-slung his rifle, setting them on the end of the cot before seating himself in the middle section. With precision that would have usually necessitated a slow deliberate process the Vulcan pulled away the bandage, managing to avoid disturbing the injured tissue despite the speed with which he complete the process. He eyed the wound a moment, then turned to a tray and began programming a medicinal course into a dispenser unit for the hypospray.

"You are fortunate, if the strike had occurred seven more centimeters of the left you would have likely lost the arm." He pulled the hypo from the receptacle socket, "Can you make a fist?"

Trip complied, grimacing a little as he did.

"And your manual dexterity?"

He ran through a series of finger exercises meant to measure nerve and muscle control, starting at the pink and touching it to his thumb and moving up through the remaining fingers to the index finger in rapid succession. The Vulcan only allowed a slight nod, showing that he was satisfied with the demonstration.

"Is your pain level manageable?"

"I know humans don't handle pain to well, but I'm managin'."

"On the contrary, humans often seem to be able to remain conscious and functional through pain that usually renders other species, including Vulcans, unconscious or catatonic."

"Its pretty painful, I'd appreciate a pain killer, I've gotta get right back to it." Trip didn't like asking for pain medication, there was still a stigma among humans regarding its use and potential for abuse, but in the situation he had little choice.

"That is a logical request." He pressed the hypo the area of the arm just below the wound and the chemicals shot into his system with a popping hiss. "I notice that your combat equipment is of a different type than the other personnel."

It was a leading comment, almost a question in its own right. Trip could sort of understand why the Vulcan might be curious.

"I'm Commander Charles Tucker from the USS Enterprise, I was inserted with a team on the planet to make sure we could get the high command out."

"Commander Tucker, you have done admirably in colonel Shelby's stead." The way the Vulcan delivered the compliment Trip wasn't entirely sure it was one.

"Just doin' my duty, sir."

"I understand you are mated to a Vulcan female and she is pregnant."

Trip felt a sudden twinge of concern. If this doctor took offense to the concept it could turn problematic, the hypo in his hand could become a weapon in its own right; an overdose of painkillers, a poison, even an air embolism could all be delivered in as little time as it would take him to press the device to the seated human. Trip's muscles tensed for possible action as he answered.

"That is correct, sir."

"Fascinating. What was the process by which the pregnancy was achieved?" The older man still didn't sound particularly affable but it was possible he was just _very_ good at being...Vulcan.

"Well...pretty much...the...conventional method, sir."

"Fascinating, there has been doubt that the respective genomes of our people would be significantly compatible to allow for natural impregnation."

"It was rather...spontaneous." Trip was finding himself wishing the conversation would be dropped, "You'll have to forgive me, but my wife...ko-telsu wouldn't be comfortable with it being discussed so openly."

The doctor half nodded, keeping his head lowered slightly, "You hold her in high regard."

"I love her, sir."

"A suitably human stance. I will rebind the wound, if possible you should return in twelve hours to have the dressing changed, there is some evidence of infection but not at a level where it is imminently problematic."

The older man worked quietly as he trimmed away part of the sleeve around the shoulder and affixed another bandage with surgical precision that put the corpsman's ministration to shame. Still, there was something that felt somewhat awkward to Trip, if he had been a human doctor, nurse, or medic he could thank them but Vulcans eschewed human displays of appreciation. It would be viewed as an emotional response, and it was best to obey the rules when in someone else's house. When the doctor had finished Trip rose, and picked up his helmet and rifle.

"Your work is exceptional, it was agreeable to meet you, sir." Tucker lifted his right hand and spread his fingers into the ta'al. "Peace and long life."

The Vulcan returned the gesture, "Live long and prosper."

Upon leaving the tent he was immediately approached by Suvak, V'Til, and two other Vulcan men of indeterminate age. Suvak nodded as did V'Til, the older Vulcan Commando's face showing a series of small cuts along his cheek which showed angry green edges where they had been opened up by some small piece of shrapnel. The other two men were clearly civilians of some variety but obviously served as the speakers for the refugees' interests. Trip lifted his right hand again in the ta'al.

"Peace and long life."

"Commander Tucker, we understand you wish to discuss plans for civilian evacuation?" The shorter of the two dignitaries asked.

"That's correct. The tactical situation has reached a point where the Romulans might consider a full scale assault on the fort before they hemorrhage anymore personnel to attrition. In that event I'd like to have'a plan in place to make sure we can get the non-combatants evacuated."

"What would be served by that course of action?" The shorter asked again in a clipped tone.

"Sir, historically speakin' after an assault of this sort, if the attacker manages to overwhelm the defenders, they're usually not to forgivin' with the people inside regardless of who they are."

The taller cocked a brow, "What concession will you make for your injured, commander?"

"There's not concession, sir. It's just how it goes, we can't weigh down your people with our injured, these men knew what they signed up for." Trip didn't like the pronouncement but it was logistically a necessity; if they were to defend Vulcan that would include dying ignobly on a cot while they civilians got away.

"Commander, it is illogical to let those men die in such a manner." The taller Vulcan, who Trip had mentally dubbed Guildenstern countered, eliciting a raised brow from the shorter whom he now mentally labeled Rosencrantz.

"Commander Tucker is correct, their mandate is protect Vulcan and its people, if an evacuation is necessary they can best accomplish that end by dying, they understand that." Suvak interjected.

"My men are willing to fight to the last, commander." V'Til offered.

"No sir, I'd like your men to ensure security and integrity for the refugees if it comes to it." Tucker objected, prompting an elevated brow from the Sub-commander.

"It is only logical that they accompany the civilians, one Vulcan life has as much worth as the other." Rosencrantz interjected, this time forcing a climbing brow from Suvak.

Trip mentally began taking count, four brows cocked, and since nobody seemed to be fully agreeing all the time with the others it was looking increasingly likely that there would be more before this was over with.

"And what value is placed on a human life?" Suvak countered, seemingly irritated at what Rosencrantz's statement had implied.

"Of course the loss of a human life is regrettable, but per yours and the commander's statement, they are deemed acceptable as part of the strategic framework." Guildenstern replied with a characteristic arching above his eye. Five.

V'Til provided number six along with his reply, "The marines, humans, in this garrison and the outlying MCS facilities on Vulcan serve as the best chance to ensure the strategic continuity of Shi'kahr, all efforts should be made to ensure their successful defense should a worst case scenario occur."

Rosencrantz again, "You must make concession for the civilians first, Sub-commander." Thus birthing eyebrow seven, again from V'Til and echoed by Suvak for eight.

"As I recall the high command was forced to instate martial law, the sub-commander has authority over issues of Vulcan interest in Shi'kahr." Guildenstern rebutted birthing number nine from Reosencrantz.

"In point of fact, the status of forces agreement between Earth and Vulcan makes concession for macvee strategic command in event Vulcan is invaded." Suvak said in sharp and a slightly self-satisfied tone, raising the ubiquitous brow to bring about ten.

Trip found himself wondering if there was something genetic, some ancient DNA component that hot-wired the Vulcan brain and forced them to use the same expression over and over again. Eleven. They were bickering, it didn't particularly sound like bickering but it was bickering none the less, everyone was trying to get the one-up on the other, win the prize for who is most logical. Twelve. V'Til, in his favor, just wanted to commit his men to a plan that would lead to eventual victory, and it seemed reasonable to assume that he wouldn't need to use his entire commando contingent to protect the civilians. Suvak...thirteen...was committed to ensuring Earth's greater interests were upheld, and Guilderstern just seemed to be softly pragmatic. Fourteen. Rosencrantz seemed like the intractable jackass, but Trip had to acknowledge that, given the same situation, he would probably have been a lot less composed than the short Vulcan. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. He'd pay real money if the would make some other form of facial expression. Still the debate continued unabated, seemingly oblivious of the fact that -eighteen- he was the -nineteen- one who was outlining the evacuation and evasion plan. Twenty.

"Alright, next one'a you that does the eyebrow thing is gettin' pistol whipped!" He finally thundered.

Suvak didn't wait a beat, simply intoned with Vulcan dryness, "Splendid."

Rosencrantz's brow rose almost reflexively at the comment by the SID section chief. Suvak pointed suddenly, face still impassive and muted as he said with all the Vulcanized conviction he could muster, "We have a winner."

"Alright, can we get back to the conversation at hand?" Trip growled, glaring at Suvak who he swore was on the verge of grinning and very pointedly looking up and away to avoid making the eye contact that would have almost certainly managed to break through fifteen hundred years of institutionalized cultural reserve and force a Vulcan into fits of giggles.

"Commander, what did you have in mind in terms of evacuation route?" V'Til inquired.

"I think our best bet would probably be to go through the aqueduct system underground. That'd make it exceedingly hard for the Romulans to discover the evacuation occurred."

V'Til nodded, "A logical approach, commander. I can task thirty of my contingent to assist in that regard and the remainder of my force will be available for defense of the garrison."

"Mister V'Til, I'd really rather not have your men sacrifice their lives if an over-run occurs." Trip tried to word it very carefully and realize he had failed to do so.

V'Til inclined his head, "Mister Suvak has correctly identified Camp Kelly as the axis on which Vulcan's political, social, and cultural integrity currently pivots. If Camp Kelly is lost, Shi'kahr is lost, and if Shi'kahr is lost there will be severe repercussions on our cultural identity."

"Alright, fair enough, but if it gets dicey I want you and your troops to escape and evade however possible, understood?"

The commando officer nodded, it was a logical concession and he had no reason to argue in favor of fighting until the last and dying alongside the humans who already seemed to hold the premium on suicidal resolve. There was something admirable about their willingness to fight to the death for a planet to which they owed nothing. It was illogical, yet somehow noble, concepts that had not be totally divorced from Vulcan culture; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Humans did the same thing but with different words and broad concepts; duty, honor, following orders, martial excellence. The end result was the same, the avenue by which they reached the end goal were only marginally separated, but along both paths lay the shattered and bloody remains of their cultural heritage and if one was to go back far enough and peel back the layers they would note how disturbingly similar they were.

"Alright then, that's it, I'll leave it to you gentlemen to set up a procedure, dismissed."

Suvak snapped to attention and saluted in the crisp human fashion, Trip returned the gesture as the two civilian Vulcans stared on at a loss as to why he would perform the gesture, managing to completely overlook the fact that Tucker had extended the Vulcan courtesy of greeting upon meeting them for the first time. Courtesy was still something of an alien concept on Vulcan, there were a series of socially acceptable procedures and either their observance or lack there-of was seen as nothing more than the criterion which one measured a normal being or a savage. The fact that humans had social and cultural observances was all but overlooked as they were likely to be illogical.

"Carillo, time for a lil' psychological warfare, get me H and S and Weapons Company commanders, I've gotta idea."

The private knew his place and what the limits were with the Commander, he had made it abundantly clear when and where nonsense was welcome and acceptable, something told Carillo he could push the envelope a little now, "Oh great...just when I thought we were in the clear, sir."

Tucker gave the private a half baleful grimace, half smirk. "Who needs Romulans when you have smart ass privates runnin' all over the place."

"I'll get right on it, sir. Did you want to talk to them over the prick or...?"

"Tell 'em to meet me on the grinder."

"Aye, sir."

* * *

><p>"Captain, the Gunzburg reports that the last attack severely damaged the EPS manifolds powering its phaser banks and ventral shielding, it is requesting permission to fall back." Sato reported calmly despite the fact the loss of the destroyer signified a 14% drop in the total operational force for their task group.<p>

The Romulan counter attack had started just after 0218 Shi'kahr time and was half-hearted at best. Fifteen Romulan ships including one light cruiser moved to attack but they failed to focus their firepower until they had already lost four ships destroyed and two more crippled. By that point both MCS cruisers and the pair of frigates loosed their type 51 capital missiles destroying another Romulan frigate and the cruiser. The gutted hulk of the cruiser still floated in space where the engagement had occurred and was now equidistance from the Romulan battle group and the two MCS task forces. It was wreathed in debris from its own decompressed decks and the remains of the Romulan frigates which were in various degrees of deconstruction. _Columbia's_ Task Force Gungnir was down two destroyers, the _Beirut_ had been forced to withdraw and the _Grand Forks_ had been evacuated and scuttled. It was a shame about the _Grand Forks_, the first destroyer of its class, named for the Air Force Base and Town where humans and Vulcans had made first contact after Zefram Cochrane landed the X-31 _Phoenix_ after breaking the warp barrier in late 2041.

"Permission granted, tell them to rendezvous with the Beirut at Oscar five." Archer replied, without agonizing over the decision.

"Aye, sir. Gunzburg, this is Enterprise, permission granted, withdraw and meet up with the Beirut at waypoint Oscar five, over." Hoshi paused, "Roger that, Enterprise out."

"T'Pol, anything new with Camp Kelly?" Archer inquired, pacing in front of his command couch, a veritable ball of nervous energy.

"The situation is unchanged captain, the Romulans do not appear to be preparing for an additional assault and energy weapon signatures are nonexistent in the area."

"Do you...sense...anything from commander Tucker?"

"He is still in pain, but his attention is focused elsewhere, nothing beyond that, captain."

"See if you can get a hold of commander Tucker, miss Sato." Archer asked calmly, despite his body language.

"Aye, sir. Black flag, black flag, this is Enterprise, come back, over." The comm officer paused as she waited for Camp Kelly to send traffic. "We copy, black flag, requesting to speak with barracuda actual, over." Hoshi looked up, "I've got him, sir."

"Put it on the main speakers, miss Sato."

"Hell's kitchen..." Trip's voice came through as modulated and distorted via the ultra-low broadcast frequency.

"Feeling better, Trip? A bit less cranky?" Archer inquired snidely.

"I ain't gettin' shot at, at the moment, tends to do somethin' for my mood, cap'n."

"That and not being injured I suppose."

"Nope, still injured, just a notable dearth of Romulans stormin' the main gate. I can't tell you how much brighter my mornin's are when I'm not havin' to repel attackin' Romulans." At the very least his snarky sense of humor was intact.

"What is the situation down there?"

"Hell sucks, sir. But we're managin' I 'spose. I don't imagine you could get us Hayes and his boys down here by any chance?"

"Negative, the Romulans still have us blocked off, they're out of range of the defense batteries but we'd still have to cross into their fire lane to get in good enough position for a mass beam-in."

"Well damn, I suspect things are gonna get interestin' down here in about three hours." Trip sounded apprehensive, he was not liking the attrition they were suffering and even through the Romulans were getting the worst of it, they still had many times more troops to call on.

"What do you mean?" Archer's face shifted back into that all too expressive mask of concern.

"Thing about whackin' a hornets nest is sometimes you kill all the hornets..." Trip paused.

"And sometimes you just piss them off something fierce." Archer finished.

"Yeah, well, we'll know one way or the other in about two hours."

"Trip..."

"Let me do my job, cap'n." He didn't sound nearly as irritated as he had the night before.

"Your job is my chief engineer."

"Until I set foot on Vulcan, then I became an expeditionary combat engineer again, and I might add I was one'a those before I was your chief engineer, sir."

"Damnit, Trip..."

"I've got seven hundred marines and a boat-load of Vulcans down here right now that need some sort of resolution before we bleed out. If you're not helpin' me take care of the four divisions sittin' outside the walls, then you're wastin' my time, _sir_." Trip's voice held that distinctive and threatening growl again.

Archer realized that regardless of his status, the last thing he wanted to deal with was a pissed off Charles Tucker. He was not deaf to the stories about what he had done in close action against the Xindi, he remembered trying to look past his chief engineer to the reptilian corpse against the bulkhead outside engineering while Trip wiped the blood off his hands with a hand towel. His eyes were dull and lifeless as he had told him that he didn't want to see it, didn't want to see the corpse and what had been done to it. At the time he had thought that maybe Trip had somehow defiled the corpse as a displaced act of rage over the loss of his sister, it wasn't until later that he heard the story of how Trip had ripped off the Xindi's lower jaw and part of his throat with his bare hands during a desperate melee. The kind, jovial, friendly Trip was just a single firing neuron away from the mechanically homicidal Trip who could kill in any of a long list of ways that were only limited by the expediency of the moment and his particular mood.

"Now if you don't mind, I'd kind of like to go about tryin' to save some lives down here, sir."

"Understood, carry on, commander." Archer choked the words, clearly more than a little disquieted.

"Roger that, barracuda, out." The anger was still readily evident in his voice.

With that the communications cut off. Hoshi noticed as T'Pol's nostrils flared as she took a single quick deep lung breath. Even with her Vulcan expression passive and neutral as possible, Sato could read the disappointment on her like it had been written in indelible marker; she wanted to say something, anything, to her mate. Maybe that was part of the anger on Tucker's end, he might want to know about how the pregnancy was progressing, hear something from the woman carrying his child, in a situation as hopeless as his, he had to take the comfort where he could get it. Based on certain tones and inflections in his speech patterns Hoshi was relatively certain he had not had more than six hours of sleep in the past five days, and now he was injured in addition to what was probably chronic dehydration and a body that was operating metabolically in starvation mode.

"T'Pol, lieutenant Reed, I want you two to start working something out where we can beam Hayes' company down to camp Kelly, I'll be in my ready room."

* * *

><p>"Rounds complete!"<p>

The mortar crews immediately began prepping additional ordinance for the next fire mission as the notes of Marcha Dragona began to play once again over the loud speakers. From the flagstaff the black flag had replaced the national ensign, there would be no retreat or to the colors played this night, only the Toque de Cabellería and the all important Degüello in a strange reversal of the historical event that had inspired a marine officer during the 47 war.

The entire garrison was being prepared for a single last ditch defense, the kind that would force the Romulans to buy inches with lives in case they eventually called the bluff. The arch-deception was to make the Romulans believe that the MCS commander was going to turn another company sized action loose on them in a repeat of what had occurred when Musashibo's unit had torn a Romulan brigade apart. As the bugle call ended the impromptu drum line of five Marines that were part of a regimental band section began playing the simple notes of a warm-up exercise. It was precise and martial, the snares all in time and the thundering bass pounding deeply into the area between the stomach and groin that sent chills up your spine and stood the hair up on your neck. The soft chatter of the cymbals playing a brassy sub-beat to go along with the staccato rattle of snares.

There were enough mortar rounds left for each section to fire 28 missions of fifteen rounds each left in the camp, so every two hours Trip would have each section fire a ten round mission on a series of pre-plots occupied by the Romulans along MSRs Viper and Python. The North, South, and East gates were being covered by teams of designated marksmen who were playing havoc with the Romulans who had been tasked to watch those positions as possible avenues to develop the situation against the fortified base. It only took about thirty minutes before the Romulans realized they had to keep their heads down to keep them from being shot off and based on what Trip had seen thus far they didn't fair any better than humans did stuck out in the heat and higher gravity, as a matter of fact they seemed to be doing even worse and dehydration could sap their strength even better than the mortars could. By 1600 he was sure the enemy would be looking at piles of severe heat casualties, and unless they wanted to leave them where they lay, entire companies of the Romulans would be combat ineffective as a result.

A pair of fast movers, heavily modified versions of the standard shuttle shot by overhead, the forward cockpit area and spine of the craft the only things that hinted at their design being based on the shuttles he was accustomed to with a narrower aft section and larger engines and control surfaces designed to allow for high speed interception and the carrying of a payload of missiles or bombs. They came in low, maybe two hundred meters up as they streaked in and released their payload of airburst bombs into a park in front of the Tav'Sal'Nava hotel and pulled away sharply, climbing to escape any residual blast wave from the detonation.

"Get some!" Carillo whispered in quiet awe.

In twenty five minutes three of Musashibo's platoons would move to just outside the gate and begin re-securing the fighting positions that had been erected there with the remaining platoons and a reserve of two more from delta two second just inside the gate to give the appearance that they were prepared to begin performing maneuver outside the wall again. With the troop concentration as high as it was at the Tav'Sal'Nava maneuver warfare was out of the question, even a full fledged company couldn't significantly threaten that kind of troop concentration to force them to rotate or expose a flank, so it all came down to bluff, would they move everything from out of the main gate and attack head on or wouldn't they? Based on what had happened thus far, Trip was counting on the Romulans being unwilling to risk it and thereby keeping them pinned in.

"Sir, where do you want us?"

Trip turned to see SGT Cummings and the remainder of the MARSOC from _Enterprise_. They looked well rested, hydrated, and fed; the exhaustion had been bled off and all that was left was finally honed aggression. On a good day a MARSOC was worth about five regular marines, a team was worth about a company, and these men were probably at damn near their peak which meant they had the operational effect of a battalion if not the killing capacity. They were a secret weapon that could turn the tide of an engagement, and he intended to keep them as a trump card in case his hand turned out to be weak and the Romulans could sense it.

"Stay with me for the time bein' I'll deploy you where needed as the situation calls for it." Trip felt a bit of excitement in spite of the apprehension, in spite of the fact that all he wanted to do right now was be in engineering listening to his warp core thrum. Of course lying in bed with T'Pol would beat that hands down, but he was wanting to keep his desires more realistic at the moment.

"Aye, sir."

Suvak approached with his fellow section 31 operators, there were seven now instead of the original four. Trip secretly began to wonder if it was a situation where Suvak could just toss a pair of them in a closet and they would multiply like pennies, mismatched socks, or coat hangers. He was half tempted to broach the subject but decided it was enough to have another force multiplier as they most certainly were.

"Now we shall have to wait and see how they react." The Vulcan declared calmly, nodding to SGT Cummings who snapped to attention and nodded back.

"If I were them I'd call my bluff." Trip replied off-handedly.

"If you were them, you would have occupied camp Kelly already, it is safe to say that if the Romulans have your opposite number, he is not in Shi'kahr."

Trip just chuckled, Suvak was a real character and he found himself unable to avoid taking a liking to the peculiar Vulcan. "Its been a real pleasure havin' you around, Suvak."

"Just be certain to invite me to the celebration when your child is born." He replied with a strange mixture of humor, affability, and cool composition.

"You've gotta deal. Eighteen hours and we're outta the woods, I'll buy you a drink."

"Commander Tucker, I am the type of Vulcan that will take you up on that offer."


	20. Chapter 20

At 1641 the Romulans finally called the bluff or, rather, they had broken in a way that hadn't been anticipated. The assault had begun with a sort of desperation that seemed to scream "don't let them out, don't let them outside the walls!" Wave after wave came as they charge en masse over the nine hundred meters between their defensive perimeter and the main gate. They sustained three hundred casualties in the first five minutes alone, by the time they entered the combined fire lanes of the bunker emplaced M-5s their casualties doubled, when the mortars began to drop on the pre-plots along MSR Viper, they tripled. In less than thirty minutes they had sustained close to a thousand casualties. By comparison not a single Marine had been killed, but the injured had to remain at their positions, and even through the wounds were slight, they sapped the effectiveness of a marine until which point it was no longer logistically sound to keep him on the line.

Men ran back to the aid station, hoping for pressure bandages, blood cleaners, and stimulants to keep them in the fight. There were not even seven hundred combat effective marines left in Camp Kelly now, of V'Til's men at least seventy five of the three hundred in his detachment were injured or otherwise incapacitated. By comparison, the Romulans still seemed to have at least ten thousand available, and they were all bunched into fighting positions in front of and around the main gate, some of them staying against the very wall itself to gain some defilade from the towers. Every time a marine had to displace to receive treatment that sapped one replacement, and even if the marine was able to return to his fighting position chances were the replacement would be to involved in the fight to fall back to his reserve position. Any hope of fighting in shifts had been abandoned and all the other gates were taking probing fire, eliminating their potential as reinforcements.

The first order to fall back had been something Trip had never imagined in his life. The sinking feeling in his stomach like his insides falling through a length of pipe lined with glass and razor blades. The choking feeling in his throat as Marines withdrew to inside the walls once again, it wasn't the idea that they had lost ground that bothered him, it was the realization that they had been effectively pushed back and the reality that it would embolden the Romulan to continue the push. As indeed it had, the M-5s had fired until the barrels overheated and had warped beyond effectiveness, he could still hear the piercing rolling series of bangs that quickly merged into a single shattering sound that one could feel all the way into their bones and rattled the teeth. The glance he had gotten had been a horror, it was almost as if some part of the gunners' brains had disengaged and this had all became some bizarre simulation or game as Romulan soldiers literally came apart as the hyper-heavy projectiles destroyed bodies. The transferred energy was so pronounced that temporary wound cavitation occasionally reached full limb or body thickness and stretched tissue had no where else to expand except out and away from the framework to which it was bound. The Gunners were hyper ventilating, mouths open wide taking gasping breaths of air, eyes ringed red and watering as mouths silently screamed of the din of the weapons themselves.

It stalled the attack long enough for mortars to once again be utilized and they fired until "rounds complete" came as a cry of resolved defeat and spiritual anguish; there would be no rearmament, no fresh rounds to be sent out, the mortar ammunition supply for the garrison was now depleted and the mortar men were defaulted to their original training roles as riflemen. Over the next seven hours, one hundred forty additional Marines had been lost to injuries or fatalities, and they had been forced to give ground until they were fighting from hastily dug trenches on the grinder and from the C2 bunker itself. Minutes after midnight Captain Musashibo had reported to Tucker that he had pulled together a reserve of 96 marines and along with the captain the Commander personally led a counter-attack that forced the remaining Romulans back out of the gate as V'Til pulled the total of his contingent to help reinforce the push and reoccupation of the main gate.

Leaning against the wall, Trip pulled off his body armor, it was so full of holes where it had absorbed disruptor bolts there was no use burdening himself with the weight anymore. He took a few deep breaths, looking over to V'Til and Captain Musashibo with an expression that displayed his quiet but sad acceptance of what he was sure was to be their fate. Another push would cave them entirely, Camp Kelly was down to less than four hundred marines and maybe one hundred fifty Vulcan commandos, and he was going to send the civilians out through the aqueducts before the thought of pressing the militia into service on the line was ever considered. If he was to be hit bad his last order would be to begin the evacuation before he died. To their credit close air support had kept it up long after darkness fell, but now it was to complicated to tell where the enemy began and where the friendlies were. As the first inclination of dawn came the fast movers from the air base had once again begun their runs, but the Romulans had apparently given up the assault and it only served to pound their fall back positions, ensuring that there would be less available for what would have to be a final assault, neither force could expect to survive any more, but reports were already streaming in that the remaining Romulan divisions in the Shi'kahr area were pulling together for some manner of maneuver, whether to prepare another assault or consolidated remained to be seen. The snipers that had continued to man the towers along the wall facing MSRs Viper and Python long after they had expended everything but the ammunition for their sidearms were reporting that the enemy casualties were easily in the thousands. As the sun began to provide the first waves of heat the smell that began to rise was indescribable, carried on callous and indifferent winds to their noses providing yet another sensory reminder of what had occurred.

"Commander..."

Musashibo choked the word, his face and eyes showing the only hint of emotion Trip had ever seen in the young officer, "Sir, it has been an honor fighting alongside you. I just want to say I've never served with a braver man. I just wanted to say that before..."

Trip fought back his own tears of exhaustion, despair, and utter sorrow at the loss, "Before nothin', cap'n. We're not finished by a long shot. We'll beat those sons'a'bitches back until Rapture."

It was nothing more than bravado, Tucker knew full well that anything more than a few hundred Romulans would manage the breakthrough and then it would all be over. The fact that all the other gates were still reporting minimal contact and visual reconnaissance indicated that there was nothing more than a few platoon sized units in those AOs at least provided the quiet comfort of knowing that a major assault wouldn't come from those avenues.

"I similarly would like to express how agreeable it has been serving with you, Commander." V'Til managed to sound tired, drained, and emotionally drawn, "You have been a great friend to Vulcan, you do your people, your world, and ours a great honor," he paused, "and your ko-telsu as well."

"I suppose if anything this has managed to get me in good with the in-laws." Trip replied, leaning his head back and closing his eyes to keep tears from escaping and eroding the last vestiges of his reserve like a crumbling dam. If it had been anyone but V'Til he would have likely given up on the attempt and just bawled for the sake of a good cry, but not in front of a "proper" Vulcan.

"Sir!"

Tucker looked up to see the haggard and unnaturally pale face of Private Carillo, his expression holding a unique sort of horror as if all the blood pouring into the dry sandy soil had awakened some ancient monstrosity from the ancient Vulcan past, a cyclopean amalgamation of all the dead come to lay its vengeance on the living.

"Sir, we're seeing movement down in their AO, it looks like they're forming for another assault."

The exhaustion suddenly faded, but it wasn't an adrenal response or any other emotion or sensation Trip could adequately describe or understand at the moment. He had the energy to move once again, the energy to continue fighting but all aspects of the drive he experienced in previous contacts was gone, it was like a subtle gnawing melancholy mixed in with a strangely cathartic feeling. When it finally hit him the dam broke, but instead of the explosive emptying of the reservoir it was just a slow seep as a few previously unshed tears worked their way down, leaving muddy trails on his dusty cheeks. No fear, no desperation, just a strange kind of sadness and a strange lack of concern for himself. The wound no longer hurt, his muscles no longer ached from exertion and the build-up of lactic acid in his system, he no longer felt thirsty or hungry. It was then he finally understood what it was; resignation...it was his time to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Sub-commander V'Til, if you could please, sir, begin the evacuation procedures. Cap'n Musashibo, I'd like you to form a reserve to hold them at the gate as long as possible. Private Carillo, please contact Enterprise and inform them Camp Kelly is about to fall so the expeditionary units can prepare appropriately." He paused a moment, making additional considerations, "And round up the MARSOCs from Enterprise and Suvak and make sure they exfil with the civilians, they'll be able to provide valuable intel on what happened down here."

It was a sudden shock to the private when he understood the Commander was implying that anyone who remained in the garrison would likely die. He didn't want to die, he hadn't experienced enough of life yet, but honestly he couldn't think of a better way to go. It wasn't some romantic idea of dying for some noble and lost cause, he would be dying amid friends and comrades and really, what better way was there? There would be no shame or indignity in the death unless he broke and tried to run, as long as he remembered he was a marine and acted accordingly, there was no cause for embarrassment, and in that there was a strange sort of comfort. Dying _for_ something didn't make you any less dead, but in those last moments, he supposed, there was probably some comfort in knowing that you actually mattered in the grand scheme of things.

"Aye, sir." Carillo typed in a new set of protocols into his back mounted communication rig.

The private followed the Commander as he crossed to the gate bunkers. This had been one of Tucker's ideas, taking GP small pre-fabs and cutting large firing slits out to allow those inside the most protection and field of fire possible. Layers of sand bags covered the outside and another three layers up to four feet high ran along the inside, nothing short of aircraft ordnance would manage to knock them out and they had proven to be the ideal positions for the M-5 heavy machine guns that had such devastating effect on the Romulan infantry actions. An hour and a half earlier the Commander had personally replaced the burned out barrel in both guns and even now they were trained down MSR Viper. Tucker looked in on the marines manning the post, they gave him tried but appreciative smiles and nods, in these few days he had earned their respect, he was the old man now, and not a one of them question his ability and desire for their survival or, barring that, a quick honorable death that any marine could be proud of. There was no death-wish; the garbage philosophy of some Quixotic academy knight-errant type that breathed, ate, and shat MCS until he bled "eo ire itum audaciter" and expected the same of everyone in his command. Commander Tucker embodied what men wanted of their COs, the trait Colonel Shelby had exuded, a life-wish, survival-wish, do-whatever-it-takes-but-live-damnit wish.

"Enterprise, Enterprise, this is Black Flag, be advised, Camp Kelly situation critical, repeat, situation critical, unable to defend against further hostile action, landing zone will be compromised, repeat, landing zone will be compromised, advise landing zone redirect when relief forces reach line of departure, over."

Carillo paused as he listened to return traffic and his eyes went wide. "Sir?"

Trip turned and replied with a deathly calm in his voice, "What is it, private?"

"Listen to this, sir!" Carillo handed the handset to Tucker.

"-ied forces have broken through Romulan defensive lines, Marine Expeditionary Unit ETA two seven minutes."

"Hoshi..."

"Commander?" She sounded more than a little relieved that he was alive, or at least she gave off that impression.

"Please tell me you can get Hayes and his boys in here."

There was a pause, dead air, a single inscrutable moment where everything seemed to hang by a thread of fate, whim, the vicissitudes of ego. Had he pushed Archer too far? Twice now Trip had read him the riot act, brassed off at his commanding officer like Archer was a plebe with a big mouth gaffing off to an instructor. He didn't want to think that Captain Jonathan Archer would be willing to kill the remaining marines in Camp Kelly to make a point. There was nothing in his nature that made Trip think he was capable of that kind of behavior, but there was a strange kind of intractability. When Jonathan Archer wanted to make a point, he damn well went about making the point, and there was always something frighteningly mercurial about the way he did it.

Trip couldn't help, at times, feeling like Archer was something of a colossal man-child living in a strangely cloistered fantasy world, raised, as he was, in the research and development departments of the greater MCS machine. His father had been the major factor behind the design of the warp 7.5 engine that had set the standard for faster than light travel in the immediate galactic neighborhood. Jonathan Archer himself had been involved in the project in one form or another since the time he was a child. The first ship to feature the engine, the de-facto flagship of the fleet was his, at times Archer seemed to suffer from delusions of grandeur, or so Tucker thought. He never really was able to pry inside his head, to figure out exactly what was going on beyond that veneer of ineffable pomposity and commissioned superiority. In these strained moments the mind began to wrestle with explanations from the unlikely to utterly bizarre, a single paranoid conclusion seemed to stick out foremost in his mind; Archer wanted T'Pol for himself, he had always seemed attracted to her in a strange way despite his quasi-relationship with Hernandez. Letting him get killed down here would allow him access to T'Pol, to provide comfort and solace.

Tucker forced the thought from his mind, pushing away any thoughts of malice or recrimination and quietly prayed, not for himself, he was ready to write himself off if it meant the 786 marines, almost half of which were wounded, still alive in Camp Kelly could make it out. He closed his eyes, thinking of the plea he would make on their behalf; _Cap'n, please, don't punish these men. Put me up on charges, I won't fight it. Send me into a warp core breach, blow me out an airlock, hell...shoot me in the damn head, but don't punish these men, they deserve to make it out of this._ He took a deep breath as the silence seemed to stretch on as he queued and prepped to say the words in as even and calm a tone as he could manage, would likely ever manage.

"Barracuda...we are too far out of range to manage a beam in at this time." Hoshi choked on the words, prompting a death-rattle sigh from Tucker who had just heard their fate sealed.

"Trip!" Archer's voice came out focused with a deadly resolve, punctuated by tones of desperation and dire necessity.

"Cap'n?"

"Can you give us very precise coordinates for a beam-in point?"

"Yes, sir, but I thought..."

"T'Pol, can you route the transporter pattern through the main deflector array?"

Trip's jaw dropped, that brilliant son of a bitch...he hadn't even considered that as an option. It would increase the effective range by at least seventy five thousand kilometers, that was enough with a little room to spare to get the company beamed in while the _Enterprise_ was still in combat maneuvers.

"It will take approximately a minute to calibrate."

"Do it!" Archer was emphatic. "Just hang on Commander, we're getting you those marines. Can you hang on two more minutes?"

"Aye, sir. They haven't hit us yet, but they're windin' up for what appears to be one last attempt, I only have four hundred seventeen uninjured marines left, we can't hold against another regiment sized push and it looks like they still have an under-strength brigade in reserve."

Archer's voice quavered, "Just hold out a half hour Trip, by that point we'll have the maneuver elements of the MEUs on the ground and we'll get you guys out of there."

"Yes, sir, thank you sir. We'll hold out if we have hang on with our teeth. Set signal pattern to X-ray, delta zero seven niner, beam in coordinates five one five eight three one one six, papa, whiskey, romeo, elevation zero one niner."

"I copy coordinates, pattern x-ray delta zero seven niner, positive weight ratio, to coordinates five one five eight three one one, elevation one niner meters. beam in ETA zero two mikes, confirm?" Crewman Clarke replied.

"Protocol confirmed, we are standing by." Slipping back into voice procedure was almost mechanical for Trip at this point.

"You stay alive Trip, be advised, I still need to kick your ass." Archer declared.

Tucker chuckled, okay so he hadn't let the chewing-out go, but right now a break-off session from the captain seemed like a small price to pay. "Alright then, duly noted, I'll make sure my backside is in proper trim for a boot christening, sir. Barracuda out."

Tucker handed the receiver back to Carillo who once again spoke through his integral head-set, "Enterprise, Black Flag, we are standing by."

Trip counted down the seconds, staring at the coordinates on the parade grounds he gave for the beam in. The seconds ticked away like minutes courtesy of the strange mutability of time where-in something so anticipated could take forever. He remembered the first time T'Pol had lost her composure in the expanse, the way her screams and violent thrashing and pounding had seemed to go on forever. How each blow seemed to go on for an eternity, yet at the same time it felt like it was over in an instant. It wasn't a physically traumatizing event, he had gotten more beaten up during MCMAP and the Leadership course than she had ever managed during his worst tirades. But there was something so emotionally draining about it, as she screeched at him in Vulcan "Estuhl veh tor-ri! Estuhl veh tor-warla!" Later he had learned what it meant; "do not touch me, do not ever touch me" and she collapsed sobbing, those moments seemed to go on forever, hours compressed into seconds; time, distance, spatial relations all muted and she seemed at once impossibly close and impossibly far despite the fact a few feet separated them. And when he finally placed a compassionate hand on her and she clung to him, still sobbing it again seemed to last through the night and into days of untold length despite the fact that he was aware how quickly it ended. He figured most of it out on his own, it wasn't him specifically and yet it was, something about his touch made her feel vulnerable, at the time feeling a man's touch, a man she felt conflicting feelings for, placing his hands on her body had scared her even though he was never forward about it. The same touching during neuro-pressure, the occasional reassuring squeeze that was meant to comfort had, later during the campaign, roused her desire and "estuhl veh tor-ri" became "sanoi estuhl veh" whispers sharply in his ear as her hands pulled at him pleadingly.

He chuckled softly to himself, how bad he had it, how he couldn't get her out of his mind for a second if he allowed it to wander too far off the beaten path. He turned back to look down MSR Viper, in the distance he could see movement, just heads moving along a wall or the blur of gray Romulan uniforms moving to-and-froe outlined by the earthy colored architecture. He was relatively certain that the Romulans didn't realize that they were being overrun in the space above, Vulcan. The hijacking of the dampening system had effectively destroyed any chance of ground to space communication unless they also had some low wave communication device similar to the MCS ULF. Maybe they sent shuttles down to warn them, it was hard to determine one way or the other, but an ounce of prevention... He turned back as he could smell and almost feel the change in the air, on the "grinder" the shapes of marines began to materialize. After a few seconds the outlines coalesced into Hayes and the 108 other marines in his company, uniforms and equipment pristine, weapons at the ready, and large smoky-gray boxes filled with supplies and additional munitions. Trip wasted no time approaching, slapping his hand into the waiting palm of the marine officer, shaking firmly.

"Major Hayes, you are a sight for sore eyes."

"Good to see you, sir. We couldn't let you hog all the fun."

The remaining MAC-V marines began grunting affirmations and greetings, not exactly wanting to show how ecstatic they were at finally receiving fresh relief forces. The MARSOC patches just helped reinforce the perception that they were "saved", each one of Hayes' marines was worth any ten MAC-V regulars. It was a light element, only half the size of a standard marine rifle company, but they were all force multipliers, it was almost like an entire battalion had been beamed in and all that could mean was death and destruction for the Romulans and a righteous ass kick courtesy of the MCS Marine Corps. The enthusiasm grew palpable as Hayes' marines began breaking open containers to hand out grenades, mortar ammunition, disposable rocket launchers, magazine after magazine of fresh from the box ammunition in still-pristine magazines and, perhaps more importantly, sports drinks which the tired MAC-V personnel sucked down greedily at first before stopping to savor the taste, the warm and pleasant rush of sugar, the relaxing effect of electrolyte replenishment.

"How are my boys?" Hayes asked quietly.

"They're fine, Major, notta one of 'em took so much as a scratch. Dunno if they're just that lucky or that good, but I'll take it either way."

Hayes stared out over MSR Viper, at the piles of Romulan dead seeing the picture as it formed in his mind. Hundreds, perhaps thousands moving up the wide road, exploiting the center dividers for cover as they came, skirting along the edges of the road using whatever was available as protection. The fire lane was so comparatively narrow from the gate. Despite the walls on either side and the fighting positions erected inside, the gate was, for all purposes, a sixty foot wide hole in the wall for the enemy to flood through. Four enemy brigades, and still they held, with only a little over a thousand men they held, and the commanding officer wasn't even a marine, he was a goddamn warp core jockey.

"Hell of a thing you've done here commander." Hayes said quietly, "Hell of a thing."

"I tried, major."

Hayes shook his head, "You did sir, you did, nothing about try here. This was nothing but 'do' and you certainly did. You missed your calling, you should have been a marine, sir."

Tucker smiled ruefully and chuckled, "I dunno about that."

* * *

><p>Sixty four hours after the landings of the third and seventh Marine Expeditionary Units, Shi'kahr had been pacified. Elsewhere on the planet the six other MEUs continued to hunt down and reduce pockets of Romulan resistance, but the momentum was solidly against the invaders as MCS forces and local forces engaged and eliminated Romulan military groups. The enemy's morale and combat effectiveness had already been sapped, it was merely a matter of cornering them and presenting them with the reality that they had two options; surrender or death and the marines didn't particularly care what option they took.<p>

Part of T'Pau hoped that not of the Romulans surrendered, not out of some sense of spite or need for revenge but, quite simply, because figuring out how to handle the prisoners was going to be problematic. Seven hundred thirty one had surrendered in Shi'kahr alone; broken, demoralized, many injured in some capacity, in point of fact their number had dropped to six hundred eighty four within twenty four hours of their surrender as come of them succumbed to injuries. There had been some initial talk of a join prisoner of war camp on Pan Mokar, a joint venture with the Andorians who felt rightly victimized as well after the loss of two cruisers with their entire crew. There was, of course, some concern over whether the Andorians would treat the Romulan prisoners in a suitable fashion and avoid undue brutality, from what she had seen so far from the few Andorians in the Vulcan Liberation Task Group they were sufficiently disciplined to avoid that pitfall.

Over the course of the days she met many humans, having been embedded with Brigadier General Ditomaso, she had literally ridden in a human ground vehicle, surrounded by the men and materiel of war. Loud, coarse, brash, and protective, so very protective of her specifically, of any Vulcan they saw more broadly. Always respectful to her if not so much so her presence; they swore, spat, joked, they were crude and acerbic with one another. Every sensibility was offended by their presence, the way they talked, the things they talked about, their smell and the smell of their equipment, their noise and that of their weapons and equipment. But with them, she felt safe, so completely and utterly safe, as if all those elements that served to irritate her senses and offend her sensibilities formed a protective wall or cave in which nothing could reach her. When they had reached Shi'kahr, rolled into Camp Kelly, she finally met him; T'Pol's mate. He was tall and powerfully built, clad in the garb of a ground-warfare marine with a black helmet and load bearing equipment. She noted that his face seemed kind, despite the set of his eyes, rimmed in red and haunted and the stubble accumulated on his face along his jaw, on his chin and cheeks, and around his mouth. He had clearly been injured multiple times, a large bandage obscuring his left shoulder, another on the adjacent side of his neck and additional smaller bandages on his right cheek, forearms, and right side. He still carried the dust covered black rifle, still gave orders and attempted to run the once beleaguered garrison with precision and discipline.

When she approached he had given her the ta'al and spoke in heavily accented Vulcan. As much as she had desired to learn more, gain a better understanding of this man, she felt a single overriding urge, she had to see Colonel Shelby. This Commander Tucker seemed to be a good enough man, by any standard, he would surely do honor to T'Pol, after coming to terms with what exactly he had faced and accomplished after taking command to MAC-V operations in the Shi'kahr theatre she found herself not only impressed but mesmerized as to how he could have done what he did. There were many things to reflect on now in the aftermath; rebuilding, reinforcement of defenses, the political climate, and, of course, the strengthening and reinforcement of MAC-V's stance on Vulcan as it was now abundantly clear how utterly necessary they had been to keeping Vulcan free. Then there was Colonel Shelby; the doctors had indicated that he had suffered severe brain damage when the plasma mortar exploded. He would be able to walk again, perform simple tasks for himself or others, but he would likely never speak or understand speech again, everything he would ever do, if he woke up, would be slow and deliberate and there was a very real chance he would not remember much of anything of his former life. The doctors did stipulate that the human brain exhibited strange levels of resilience and that nothing in their prognosis was definitive, but based on their scans it seemed that their overview was likely. Vulcan doctors did not readily make those kinds of concessions so T'Pau found herself experiencing a strange glimmer of hope, and that was when she made a decision she was questioning.

It had been easy enough to acquire the house, arrange for round the clock monitoring and care. There had never been a question of familial ties, Shelby was, as she learned from General Ditomaso, an orphan having spent his entire life without blood or legal family bonds. There was nobody waiting for him back on earth, no one to watch over or take care of the shattered warrior. There would never really be a life between the two of them, he was likely to never full understand and perhaps would never remember who she was and what the nature of their friendship had been, but at the very least he would be near and she found a strangely emotional comfort in that. The long term prognosis was that he wouldn't live more than a few more years as the slow degradation after an injury of this nature always seemed to slowly kill the victim and they almost never lasted beyond a decade or two after the fact. He would be dead before her first pon farr and she would be free to take a mate, and she felt a strange twinge of emotion at the thought of it, if she were to categorized it based on the emotions she experienced as a child she would call it sadness. But, perhaps now she could tell him honestly all the things she had never said to him before, it was just shameful that she could only do so now that he did not understand.

* * *

><p>Trip stalked slowly towards the shuttle, the past four days had been a glut of hand-shakes and back patting, and every officer from 1LTs to Lieutenant General Kim "Bill" Soong-Yu had congratulated him and told him what a fantastic job he had done. What he'd done...four hundred thirty eight marines dead, of which over two hundred eighty had died under his command, his orders. It was a struggle to even wrap his mind around, had he killed those men or had the Romulans? Where lay the responsibility, the blame? He had tried to bring it up with Suvak when they had finally got that drink. The Enlisted Man's Club and Officer's Club had been combined into a single rather informal setting with the understanding being that if one group or the other sought more exclusive settings for gatherings they would have to rely on "alien" restaurants built to cater to non-Vulcan visitors. The inside of the building was pristine, untouched, and Trip had found the bar reasonably and precisely ordered. The two had nursed their bourbons, sitting in silence for a long time.<p>

"I suppose you will be eager to rejoin your ko-telsu on Enterprise."

Tucker shook his head, "How am I ever gonna explain this?"

"Don't. Do not ever speak of it, lock it away some place in your mind and never let her near it. She can never understand, most Vulcans could never understand exactly what happens to men at war." Suvak took a sip from the Old-fashioned glass, "What you did down here was your duty, commander. There are many marines and many, many more Vulcans who are alive today thanks to your command. Never forget that."

Trip sighed, rolling the glass slowly and looking at the amber liquid lazily circling as a hyperbolic wave along the clear edges. "Is this your first war, Suvak?"

"Yes, it was...is."

"Do you think its changed you?"

The Vulcan fixed his eyes on the engineer emphatically. "It has changed everyone it has touched. It will take decades for some Vulcans to fully reconcile what they experienced here. I dare to say some of the marines who fought here will never fully be free from it. It will haunt them forever, but the important part is they will continue to draw breath and whether or not they ever find peace or resolution, they at least have been given the years in which to do it."

Suvak finished his bourbon and slid the glass forward, indicating a second was in order, "The Romulans sought to deprive them of what was rightfully theirs, you made sure they could not do so. Most of these men were already good as dead, you gave them their life back, commander, that is a profound gift."

"Givin' someone their property back isn't a gift, its just bein' a decent person." Tucker poured another drink for the now-officially-minted SID operations branch station chief for Vulcan, somewhere between a single and a double, they weren't keeping track of quantity just now. "What are you plannin' on doin'? In the long term, anyway."

Suvak shrugged, a decidedly human gesture, "I suppose I will complete a few years as station chief then perhaps request a posting back on Earth. I do not feel like I know this world anymore, it does not fit correctly, it chafes me." He paused, his expression remaining impassive except for a sudden lightening in his eyes, "I hate it here."

Suvak lilted lightly at the last words, as if some profound revelation had lifted a colossal weight from him. It was almost as if he had been liberated and he finally understood who and what he was. "Yes, I hate this world...I hate its people. It is my home, I would die to protect it, but I cannot stand it. There is no feeling here, just this weight, crushing and impermeable, and I feel like it is going to choke the life from me."

Trip stood solemnly, almost afraid to move as if to do so at this precise moment would bring about the end of existence. This Vulcan, in measured tone and with the patinaed cladding of logic was bearing his soul. It was strangely startling in a way he couldn't fully grasp. Not even T'Pol was this direct with him, maybe it was something about going to war with a man, spilling your blood with him, killing alongside him. There was certainly a special kind of intimacy that was born of such events, but it still surprised him. It was almost disturbing, but somehow it felt cathartic, these were not his feelings, they were Suvak's, but in his willingness to share them he came to realize what it was. Suvak was his friend, he hardly knew him and yet he felt like he was as close to him as he could ever be to another being and somehow it was comforting.

Trip lifted his glass in an strangely bitter and contradictory toast, "To Vulcan."

Suvak lifted his in turn, "To Vulcan, may the Romulans continue to choke on it."

* * *

><p>It had been eight hours since his drinks with Suvak when General Ditomaso officially relieved Trip of command. The full after action report he had put together came in at a "modest" forty pages and the General had assured Tucker that it would be considered on the years top reading list for every officer two stars and under. The shuttle that was taking him to <em>Enterprise<em> had been flanked on both sides by an honor guard the Brigadier General had assembled to pay proper respect. Respect, admiration, honors...all of that didn't matter a bit to Trip right now. The glance he had managed at a mirror revealed a shell of his former self. Despite the tan he looked pale, drawn, tired, eyes ringed in black bags, lids tinged red and the cornea seeming somehow jaundiced. Ditomaso had echoed Lieutenant General Kim's words, calling him a credit to the uniform, a model officer, the bravest son of a bitch he'd ever met. There would be medals, awards, commendations in the pipeline, more bright-work for his dress whites to remind everyone at the next MCS officer's ball he attended who he was and what he did.

He wanted to spit the idea out, like bile burning in his throat. He'd trade every bit of it, all the accolades, all the recognition just to bring back a handful of the boys that had died under his command. With eyes closed, head bobbing with the gentle bucking of the shuttle as they burned through the thermosphere he finally let it come out of him, leaking down through his arms into fingers and his legs into his feet; the exhaustion and despair he had held back was now escaping from carefully placed reserves and if it was not staunched it threatened to fill the shuttle and drown him. Then something strange seemed to happen, it was as if he felt the fatigue backup into his body and pass outwards, returning with feeling of sadness and concern. They were out of place, not organic, they didn't belong there. Deep in his mind he felt more than heard the word.

_K'diwa._

A lament, almost a cry. He focused on pushing the negative feelings away, understanding now that every bit of it had struck T'Pol like a freight train, this whole time he must have been unconsciously blocking her. At some point the bond had returned, perhaps finally recovering from the shock it had suffered at the hands of that deeply buried subconscious he had tried to hide from her. His desire to protect her had caused him to block her from the horror of it all without even realizing he was doing so or with the knowledge on exactly how he had done it. It would be some time before he would be able to open himself back up fully, right now even his feelings of love were overridden by feelings of survivor's guilt, physical pain, frustration, and inadequacy. This was a time more than any other he would prefer to find comfort in her, but in doing so she would experience it all at its full strength and if he had this hard a time reconciling the emotions they would surely cripple her. He began considering other issues at hand, prioritizing a list of what he would accomplish upon reaching _Enterprise_ and a preferred order of completion.

First, avoid catching any static from Archer, that was a must. He was a raw nerve at the moment, stress was one thing, death was one thing, but having to _watch_ men die, watch them draw their last breath, listening to some of them scream in pain, calling out to God, loved ones, their mother...it was hard to properly catalogue something like that. Jonathan Archer never once had to watch a being almost explode as rounds tumbled through their body, taking what had to be pounds of flesh with them as they explosively exited. He never had to look at a head that had been split open and spilled the gelatinous mass of brains across the ground. If the first thing he had to look forward too was a verbal dressing down at the hands of the captain, there was a very real potential that MCS would be down two officers; a captain whose untimely demise had been brought about by the chief engineer who would be up on charges for murder.

Second, make it to sickbay. He had a very real feeling that his shoulder had become infected, he had neglected the Vulcan doctor's order when things had gone wrong and short of having a corpsman change the dressing two days prior he had made no attempt to seek further treatment. As it was it ached, burned, felt as if it was tearing with each movement and the heat radiating from it was palpable. There was also the sickening iron smell of infection, not far enough along for decay to set in, but presenting the very real potential of blood poisoning.

Third, bathe. He had managed to effectively clean himself twice in the past eighteen days and he could sense that his odor must have only been rivaled by the feeling of griminess that seemed to painted over his entire body. The whiskers of the unbidden beard itched, his hair felt like raw nerves soaked in oil standing on a scalp rubbed raw with pumice. He felt like the taint of cordite and blood and sweat and dirt had crept into every pore and only thorough scrubbing would remove it all. If he could physically wash away the battles maybe it would help him emotionally do the same.

And once all that was done...the most important thing to him; kiss his wife, tell her that he loved her and find out about their baby. The thought of being able to do that again, it was the primary thing that had carried him through it all. Nothing in his life was more important than the two of them now and he wanted them to know, both of them.

Exiting the shuttle, his gear in hand, ragged and worn, holes in his combat utilities in a dozen places he hardly felt human much less like an officer. Upon exiting the shuttle bay he found Reed, Phlox, and T'Pol waiting for him. He went through the motions, answering Reed's cursory questions about the situation on the ground with terse answers while Phlox ran a medical scanner over him and fussed over the wounds on his left shoulder, neck and right side. The whole time though he could only stare at his wife, his mate, his woman. He was as certain she could see the want in his eyes as he could see the want in hers; not some sexual urge, it was an uncontrollable need to touch, to hold, to love. He wanted to disregard everything else and just be with her a moment, to feel her hands in his, against his face, to smell her and feel her warmth close. Phlox dispelled it succinctly and gently.

"Commander, I will await you in sick bay, I am afraid infection is beginning to set in and we must treat it quickly."

Reed added his clipped report and similarly excused himself for the moment, "The captain will be debriefing you at oh eight thirty tomorrow. Good to have you back, sir."

"Thanks, Malcolm." He replied softly, his eyes still locked with his wife almost as if caught in a circuit of mutual hypnotism.

Then they were alone, his hand came up to her face, a pair of fingers, dirty and cut tracing gently along her cheek, feather soft and ghosting along the skin. Her eyes were large, delphic oceans in which he longed to drown himself. So much unspoken love, worry, fear, longing, and desire swimming around in the rich bistre shining through a sheen of tears that would be unshed. Her own hand came up to his face, extended fingers softly touching along his cheek and jaw, lips cracking as she breathed a word almost silently through a choked voice.

"Beloved."

He was home.


	21. Chapter 21

Phlox began the treatment by helping the command remove the fatigue blouse and undershirt. It was a laborious task as he pulled the clothing away, trying to avoid irritating the wound on his left shoulder and right side. When the jacket was finally opened and removed, Trip had simply taken a pair of scissors and cut the undershirt open, carefully pulling it away with the physical discomfort etched on his face. He looked so drawn T'Pol almost gasped. There was nothing left on his frame, any fat, any reserve had been burned away and his skin seemed loose over the musculature in a way that was almost farcically pronounced. She had always found his physique agreeable, she enjoyed his physical strength, the appearance of his musculature, the way he seemed to dwarf her, it made her feel safe, like he was biologically equipped to protect her from any potential extant source of harm.

The bright red of the wounds on his arm and side drew her attention away from the fact he was at least 9 kilograms lighter now than when he had left _Enterprise_ and not all of it could be attributed to burning the small amount of fat he had on his body, it was almost as if something had sucked the life out of him and the wounds seemed to be very visible candidates. She finally noticed, stitched up his chest, a series of smaller red marks, indicators of where his body armor had managed to more fully absorb the energy of disruptor impacts.

"Commander Tucker, it appears you were not eating properly on the planet, and you are dehydrated." Phlox admonished in a marginally recriminative tone.

"Sorry Doc, we kind of got busy down there."

"With your hypoglycemia and lack of sleep caloric energy was all you could rely on to keep your energy reserves in place, how did you function?" The Denobulan inquired in his quick animated fashion.

"Willpower...all we had left for a while there was adrenalin and willpower."

"When did you sleep last, Commander?"

Trip's eyes rolled up and away, mouth pursed as he tried to access in his memory a recollection of events and time elapsed. "You know...I have no idea."

Phlox sighed and gave Tucker and scolding look. "Commander..."

"Phlox, I'm sorry, but..." He replied softly, apparently feeling quite chastened and either physically or emotionally incapable of his usual defensiveness, "I had men dyin' or injured down there right and left. I had to make sure everything was still runnin', I just couldn't find the time to do more than close my eyes for a few minutes."

"I'm not sure if I should send you to the galley or your quarters first."

Trip managed a feeble grin, "If its all the same to you, lyin' down for a while sounds like a winner."

Phlox nodded with a slight smile of his own, "Of course Commander, after I get the infection neutralized I'll give you a nutrient injection and you may return to your quarters. Now, as for the shoulder injury, you are developing an infection as you can note from the tissue swelling and temperature of the tissue itself. Fortunately we caught it before tissue necrosis can occur so you should be able to recover quite easily but I would still like to perform a dermal regeneration treatment while I have you here."

Chief Hospital Corpsman Cutler crossed over to Tucker and began running the dermal regenerator over the injury site. Tucker fidgeted at the tingling sensation forcing a slight frown from the Chief as she admonished him, "Hold still Commander, it'll only take a few minutes."

Phlox meanwhile crossed to T'Pol, gesturing for her to step around the side of his office and out of eyeshot. Once they were clear of he turned to T'Pol with a serious expression on his face. The petite Vulcan recoiled in anticipatory fear of some horrible revelation about the Commander's condition being made.

"Sub-commander, as you know I served as a medic in the Denobulan infantry and spent a number months treating injuries during the forty seven war while part of the inter-species medical exchange." The doctor began, "Men, after being in a combat zone, often experience a rather pronounced desire for sexual intimacy with a spouse or lover. In his current condition I do not believe it would be prudent for the commander to engage in any strenuous activity for a few days at least."

T'Pol seemed rather flustered by the conversation, "A Vulcan wife does not refuse her spouse."

"Just tell him you are not 'in the mood' as it were."

"We do not have distinct moods. When he experiences sexual desire, so do I and likewise when I experience desire, so does he." T'Pol replied, very matter-of-fact about the issue she would rather remain private.

"How do you deal with the rather prevalent morning 'issue' human males seem to suffer from?" Phlox was letting medical curiosity carry him into dangerous territory, a fact that was emphasized by T'Pol's olive flush in her cheeks, forehead, and ears.

"We had been trying to discover a suitable remedy to that issue."

Phlox reached into his jacket and pulled out a hypospray, holding it up by the injection stem, "This is a sedative, it is entirely possible that in the wake of recent events Commander Tucker will have trouble sleeping regardless of his current level of exhaustion, I would suggest that you inject him with this after he has attended to his personal libations upon returning to quarters."

T'Pol jacked a brow upward, "You seem to assume that I will be joining commander Tucker in his quarters. You seem to have forgotten how small the are."

"Actually, sub-commander, I assumed he would be joining you in yours. I assume you would like some time alone with your husband and perhaps a little-" The doctor bounced his shoulders with a smile, "physical affection." His expression became suddenly and unpredictably serious, "But no sex." He raised an admonishing finger, "he needs time to recover and if commander Tucker approaches sexuality like he does engineering and, apparently war fighting, then he will likely strain himself striving for excellence."

T'Pol felt a strange little mental nudge, something in her brain urging her to volunteer a hinting amount of information she would have normally reserved. She spoke softly, her voice in the low smoky tones of intimate details. "Doctor, you are assuming that commander Tucker has to strive for excellence and that it does not just come to him naturally."

Phlox snapped his head back almost as if the words had struck him, eyebrows elevated, "Still, sub-commander, the order stands."

"I will attempt to convince him of the logic of your prescribed course of action should the event arise, but I will not refuse him."

Phlox sighed, "I suppose I cannot expect more than that. Have you experienced any further abnormal symptoms regarding the pregnancy?"

"In regards to that, I would find it agreeable if you did not share any information regarding the immune system response with the commander if he does not ask directly." T'Pol looked away, not wanting to look the Doctor in the eye when asking him to withhold information from the child's father.

Phlox sighed again, "I will not venture the information if I am not asked, may I ask why you do not want the commander to know?"

"I do not want to cause him unnecessary concern. The issue has been resolved, it would be illogical to cause him additional stress by bringing the matter up when it has been taken care of."

"T'Pol, it would be best if you informed him. If there is some other unforeseen...issue, he will want to be able to make an informed decision if you are in some way, shape, or form incapacitated." The doctor's tone had taken a scolding edge.

"That is a logical conclusion, doctor. I will inform him of the matter when I am satisfied he is mentally capable of receiving the news."

"Now, as to my original question?"

"I am finding the experience of consuming animal flesh is no longer as disagreeable as I had initially believed it to be." She replied tightly, again looking away as if in some embarrassment.

"Excellent, it means your body chemistry is adjusting accordingly, just remember, you are doing this for your child. From what I have read it is not entirely uncommon for Vulcan children to consume animal protein on a semi-regular basis during key points of their development." The Denobulan smiled.

"Among the cultural sub-set of Vulcans to which my family belongs total abstinence from consuming any form of flesh or eggs is effectively banned from birth." T'Pol stated flatly, "I had never consumed flesh in any form prior to your dietary stipulation."

"If you intend to make a life with commander Tucker, do you not think it might eventually be inevitable regardless of whether you had decided to have children or not?"

"Commander Tucker is very accommodating in regards to my anathema for the practice of meat eating, he does not abstain himself but generally tries to avoid doing so in front of me." She clarified.

"Very well, please try to ensure the commander gets at least sixteen good hours of rest." Phlox smiled again, lacing his fingers together at his waist.

T'Pol frowned slightly, "That will not be plausible, he has a debriefing with the captain in the morning."

"At what time?"

"Zero eight thirty according to mister Reed." She supplied, expression passive.

"I will contact the captain and give him an update on commander Tucker's current medical condition, surely he will revise the meeting time." Phlox commented, staring at his office disconnectedly. "In the meantime, please be certain the commander gets some rest, he is in far worse condition than I led him to believe. While his health is not in danger as it stands now, he is still suffering from severe physical fatigue that could lead to a litany of complications."

"I understand doctor, I will attempt to ensure he receives proper rest and relaxation. Are we excused?"

"Just as soon as Corpsman Cutler has completed her dermal regeneration procedure." The doctor said in a conciliatory tone.

Stepping from around the side of the office they both noted Trip's posture. While he sat upright, his face and eyes were fixed on some indistinct part of the floor or perhaps beyond the floor, out through the hull and into space. Humans called it the "thousand yard stare" and it was one of the hallmarks of post traumatic stress. Phlox's countenance darkened as he suddenly realized that his physical condition was not as imminently dangerous to his health as was his current mental state. Before the engineer could look up Phlox stepped in front of T'Pol who looked up to see the seriousness of the doctor's expression. He nodded with his head back towards the office and they once again stepped back around the corner unnoticed by Tucker.

"T'Pol, I understand Vulcan emotional reserve is of great importance to their mental well being, however humans tend to be far more emotive and commander Tucker is clearly near emotional collapse. You might be better served by avoiding his presence this evening."

"That is out of the question, doctor, he is my mate and I share his pain." T'Pol choked the words out, her expression an inscrutable mask of emotions Phlox could not adequately catalogue.

"Very well, I will up the dosage on the sedative, it should put him to sleep quickly."

T'Pol nodded and turned back to check on her husband. By now Cutler had finished her treatment and Trip hopped down from the biobed, looking at his shredded shirt and torn fatigue blouse. He sighed, he'd be giving someone a show as neither would adequately cover him now, he hadn't even been aware of how many holes were in the jacket. Someone, somewhere, would consider it to be fashion or maybe even a collector's item once word of what happened made it out and into the media and he wondered with almost morbid curiosity what he would be able to get for it when that time came. He suddenly felt a totally disoriented burst of rage and he grabbed the jacket angrily, ready to toss it into the closest disposal unit when the narrow Vulcan fingers and small hand came to rest softly on his. It was almost like the seething anger exploded into a fine mist, leaving his body as quickly as it came and he turned to look into her eyes seeing the compassion that everyone else would miss.

"I am certain a museum on Vulcan would wish to acquire this piece as a reminder of the debt of gratitude that is owed to those men that died protecting our world." She said softly.

"You're right."

T'Pol took the moment to survey the physical damage he had sustained and noted where the shoulder wound had once been split open and burned. The rending of the tissue had not extended very deep but there would almost certainly be a scar left there even with the dermal regeneration treatment. The wound to his right side showed similar signs of having been a tissue penetrating burn that would likely result in a starburst shaped scar when it finished healing. A thin film covered both wounds, it would act as a gas permeable bandage, protecting the wounds from getting wet but still allowing air access to them until they had healed sufficiently. She counted fifteen other wounds on his body of minor severity, mostly burns less than ten centimeters across extending from his stomach to chest and clearly not being beyond skin thickness in depth or severity. The cuts on his neck from shrapnel were also mercifully shallow as were the cuts on his forearms. The muscle was much more defined now that whatever adipose tissue he had seemed to have burned away and left him almost disturbingly lean. He had been lean before with a low body fat percentage courtesy of his swift metabolism and high activity level, but were it not for the bulk of his musculature he would look emaciated now.

The door opened to the sickbay and they turned to see Archer step in, his expression sour and suddenly taken aback. Trip closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his mind racing right in time with his heart as he got that sick feeling in his stomach that seemed to suggest confrontation was imminent. He didn't want to have to do it, didn't feel like he should have to, but it was perhaps in everyone's interest if he apologized to the captain. He didn't feel he had done anything wrong or overstepped his bounds, but Archer might not see it that way and at the end of the day he was a subordinate and respect of one's commanding officer was expected. Archer could effectively demand an apology and while Tucker was not legally obligated to comply, the captain could just as easily cite him for insubordination.

_Be a man, Tucker, be a man and take your lumps._

"Cap'n, sir, I'd like apologize for my behavior while in communication with the ship during the siege on Camp Kelly. I was disrespectful and out of line, sir."

Archer waved it off with a dismissive gesture, "You were under a lot of stress Trip, getting attacked on all sides by a numerically superior enemy was a major strain. I was just coming down to check on your condition."

"They managed to shoot me up pretty good. Thank God for the thermo-ballistic personal armor system."

T'Pol noted her mate's rigidity, despite the pleasantries there was an obvious tension between both men and she could feel it, there was something almost adversarial in the air. She sensed feelings of shame and anger through the bond with her husband as well as elements of indignation and disdain. On Archer's face she noted was looked like antipathy and frustration. She found herself at a loss as to determine exactly what it was that had caused these emotions to be expressed by two men she had always assumed were close friends. She could only assume that it had something to do with Trip's actions on Vulcan, as history would remember it, it was Charles Tucker, not Jonathan Archer, who would be most responsible for stymieing the Romulan invasion and setting the ground work for the successful liberation of the world. Trip would be the one having medals pinned to his chest and high military honors. Archer would end up a foot note, the captain who just so happened to command the ship on which Tucker served.

From Trip she suddenly started to sense feelings of protectiveness, specifically he seemed to view Archer as a threat to her. It was confusing, why did her mate feel like Archer was a threat to her? Human psychology, specifically male reactions, it suddenly dawned on her that he viewed Archer not as a threat to her specifically but as competition for her. He feared that Archer would try to steal her away from him and he wanted to protect his claim to his mate. It was absurd, she had no interest in the captain romantically at all, her desire was for Trip and Trip alone. But, perhaps there was something he sensed that she could not. Humans released pheromones, they were not particularly strong but it was possible that human biology was innately tuned to pick up on the signals. She needed to extricate him from this situation, as emotionally overwrought as he was, the unspoken tension between the two officers could result in a loss of control on his part as she could almost see the black oily smoke wisps coiling around him as the modified MAOA gene began dumping hormones and chemicals into his system, preparing him for deadly violence. His body jerked suddenly and his posture changed ever so slightly, as if something inside him had disconnected, like a safety switch had been thrown and he was now a weapon in battery, and the haunting assertion T'Pau had made suddenly echoed through her mind.

She decided to brave exposing herself to the monstrous element of his violent subconscious again and reached to him through the bond. She would sooth him at her own expense, keep him from doing to Archer what she knew he was capable of. She heard a small quiet voice coming through the bond out of his mind; a poem sung softly and she felt his balance begin to restore itself. He took a deep breath and his posture relaxed as the aggression of tensed muscle and prepared stance seemed to slide off him and down through the deck plating to be lost in some dark part of the ship which festered with displaced hate and anger. T'Pau's words suddenly seemed hollow and meaningless; a weapon could not control itself, it could no order itself not to fire, it could not defy the mechanism that made it operate, but he had done just that. The fact he had done so seemed to terrify Archer more than the palpable threat of violence that had radiated silently from him moments before. She could see the captain's loss of composure in the wake of the sudden changes in the engineer's demeanor.

"Take as much time as you need, commander. Just come see me when you get a chance tomorrow."

"Aye, sir." As if to emphasize the reply he snapped to attention and saluted, the act prompting Archer to grudgingly return the gesture.

T'Pol let out a small sight of relief and walked up to her husband, looking up into his eyes which lowered to meet hers. There was something she couldn't exactly place in them, something that still felt somehow threatening. She decided to disregard it, he didn't need to know of her misgivings right now, it would just be another thing to disquiet him.

"K'diwa, you should rest."

"I know darlin', can I take a shower first?"

"I believe you would be more comfortable if you did." She could almost feel his heart sink, it had been a case of him "fishing", trying to determine what her intentions were.

"Alright then, any chance I'll see you later tonight?"

They were speaking in low quiet tones, trying to ensure that neither Phlox nor Cutler were made privy to the conversation.

She arched a brow in amusement, "I believe that is a safe assumption, allow me to escort you."

They hadn't even made it half way down the hall before they found themselves accosted by a fast approaching Sato and Mayweather. Hoshi dispensed with any attempt at propriety and gave commander Tucker a worried hug, every ounce of concern she had experienced pouring out in that moment. T'Pol cocked an amused brow at her mate, a split second of defensiveness creeping into her mind until she realized there was nothing romantically competitive about the action, it was merely humans showing platonic affection for one another as was their way. After the momentary embrace she stood back and shook her head.

"You have no idea how worried you had us."

"Sorry 'bout that." Trip smiled weakly, he looked over to the Navigator to whom he extended a hand, "Travis."

Mayweather spread his arms and stepped in, "Hug it out, commander."

T'Pol noted her mate's chuckle as he embraced the junior officer, patting him on the back.

Hoshi took an appraising look over the shirtless form of Tucker, the tattered MCUU jacket over his shoulder, he was still in the camouflaged trousers and boots, the thigh holster with side arm still strapped to his leg, he presented quite the picture and she whistled appraisingly, turning to T'Pol and speaking in low almost conspiratorial tones.

"If you let him parade around like this you're going to make every woman on the crew jealous, sub-commander."

T'Pol elevated an amused brow again, "Would that include yourself, lieutenant Sato?"

"Me? No, I'm just enjoying the view...would have been nicer without the injuries though." Hoshi gave Trip a scolding look, fists on her hips in a mock scolding posture, "Duck next time, huh? You're ruining the peep-show for us girls, you jerk."

"What are you two doin' down here?"

"I'm using the head." Hoshi nodded.

"I'm off duty anyway." Travis offered.

"Well, I'm glad to be back, now if y'all don't mind, I really gotta get a shower and some sleep. I think I'm goin' on day five now..."

T'Pol was making it clear that she wanted her mate to keep the pleasantries to a minimum as she slowly began to continue down the corridor to the turbolifts. She wanted to cloister him before anyone could ask any questions about the fighting on Vulcan, a subject which was surely still very sensitive for him. One of the failings of human emotionality was that well-wishing could often being intrusive or traumatic in its own right when the subject was sufficiently delicate. In regards to her own pregnancy and the invasion of Vulcan, she suspected that some of the more senior staff of _Enterprise_ had acted as insulation against some of the more persistent expressions of sympathy, congratulations, and, perhaps most thankfully of all, resentment. This situation was slightly different, she knew Trip counted both Sato and Mayweather as friends and if she tried to actively put them off it would be rude and, perhaps, intrusive on her part. As it was she took the course of action that acted as a gentle nudge to her husband.

"Yes, sir. Just wanted to welcome you back personally." Sato replied.

"Likewise, sir." Mayweather agreed.

"We'll catch up later." Hoshi replied, her supreme capacity for reading the mood prompting her to facilitate the commanders extraction from the conversation.

"I'll catch up with you two later."

Trip quickly caught up with T'Pol and they made their way to turbolift. Once they had both stepped inside he leaned against the back wall and closed his eyes, he took a deep breath, nostril flaring to allow a quicker intake of air. When the lift stopped he followed T'Pol through the door in a daze, total situational unawareness, it was the exact opposite of his usual behavior. He didn't look at what deck they were on, what section, where she was leading. When they finally stopped in front of her quarters it took him a moment to fully grasp the fact as he knit his brows together in confusion. Why had she walked to her quarters first?

"Alright then, I suppose I'll see you later."

T'Pol seemed similarly confused, "I had thought you would prefer to stay here..."

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, fighting back the exhaustion, shaking his head suddenly as if in doing so he could clear the fog that seemed to be cloaking his conscious mind. He gave her a vacant look, like something she had said had not made any sense to him, just wasn't managing to register.

"Wait...what? I thought I was..." Something once again clicked in his head, his entire demeanor changed unexpectedly. "I can't do that, its against regulations."

"Trip, you do not understand, when our relationship became common knowledge among the admiralty, MCS had no choice but make concessions, your quarters have been resumed, all of your belongings were transferred here. These are your quarters now."

"Well then where are you stayin'?"

T'Pol wasn't sure what had left him so utterly vacuous, perhaps it was the result of exhaustion but his behavior was almost alarmingly naive. "Logically, with my husband."

She noticed the stares they were receiving from passing crewmen, the float shift change had apparently just occurred and numerous members of the crew were heading to their respective billets or the bathing facilities. As it was the nature of the pregnancy was still subject to speculation and theory. Thanks to a bit of misinformation many of the crew still believed that natural conception between Vulcan and Human was impossible so the prevailing theory seemed to be that T'Pol's pregnancy was a biological clock response and that she had been impregnated in vitro. A certain faction of what Hoshi had called the "Trip Tucker Fan Club" still held out hope, it seemed, that the marriage was a sham to allow T'Pol the dignity of becoming pregnant in wed-lock. She still found herself divided over making their relationship known or, at least, common knowledge or whether she should try to keep the truth obscured.

Either way, him standing in front of "her" quarters now drawing attention to their presence and the fact that he might be entering them was just adding more tidbits to the rumor mill. Everything she was picking up through the bond was a confused and muddled garble of thoughts and reactions, a hundred different voices all speaking simultaneously; different words, different languages, different tone, pitch and timbre. And behind all of it was the humming exhaustion, complete bankruptcy of energy and reserves. The very fact he was still standing was something of a scientific mystery, Vulcan suffering from equivalent amounts of mental and physical exhaustion were often cloistered for extended periods to effectively recover. The fact that he was nearly delirious at this point was understandable.

"K'diwa, please come inside. This is something that would logically be best explained after you are better rested."

He continued to stare at her blankly, then his face began to screw into a progressively more confused expression. This was intolerable, he was beyond reason at this point, she had no choice but to physically guide him inside. She turned, punched the code into the lock on the door access console and when it had opened she hooked her right hand into the waist of the camouflage trousers and pulled him into the room. No sooner had the door closed she felt his arms close around her, lifting her off the ground and looking up into her eyes with a devious grin.

"Gotcha..."

She became aware of his mental processes, gathering thoughts, reflections, memories and shoving them back into that dark area of his consciousness she understood now to be the violent and terrifying aspect of his psyche she had come to know all to well. T'Pol was genuinely surprised, she had truly believed that his mental processes were severely impaired by fatigue and the trauma he had experienced during the fighting. In actuality he seemed far more intact and was exhibiting much greater control over his mental processes than she thought possible given his current condition.

"I can feel you pokin' around in there."

"You seemed to be genuinely disturbed and confused. I find it...alarming...that you could mislead me so easily." She was trying to hide her feelings of affection and admiration under a facade of irritation and disappointment. She softly probed his emotional reactions, trying to see if she had been effective in making him feel chastened, to her surprise she only felt his affection and a hint of amusement.

"There are things in there right now I don't want you seein'. Its bad enough for me, I'm not gonna make you suffer through it too."

"A wife must help her husband in his times of emotional duress."

"Oh no, ko-telsu t'nash-veh. A husband should spare his wife sufferin' where he can. I'll process this on my own."

"Is this what our marriage will hold for us? Will we hide things from one another, deceive one another?" She looked down at him, a little hurt and anger showing in her eyes now, she could feel him react to the emotions projected through the bond.

"Never when it matters, darlin'."

It was an infuriatingly human answer, but she sense the truth in what he said; he would never hide things that matter from her, he would always be faithful to her and her alone and she could feel that. He moved his consciousness into her mind, slipping into her through the bond, wrapping himself around her gently, softly, a comforting warmth. It was like a warm blanket, old and frayed at the edges, but soft, so very soft, more so than the finest cloth that could be had. It was comforting, but she was still irritated by the fact that he could be so positively intractable. Human pride, it was by its very nature illogical. Vulcans took pride in logic, emotional suppression, propriety and excellence, humans considered pride an emotion and while by dint of that it was the antithesis of logic, they were so remarkably similar. She canted her head to the side looking down at him from where he held her up.

"You have not eaten, have you?"

"Its been a while, I think about a day or so." He answered with almost chagrined frankness.

"While you are attending to your hygiene I will acquire some sustenance for you." His odor was indeed pungent, but there was something almost intoxicating about it as her mind twisted olfactory input into a series of normally disassociated emotions. It was _his_ smell, it signaled to her that her mate had returned to her, through great peril and personal risk. He had not only returned, he had returned triumphant, already being hailed by some as the savior of the planet. It was a rather overblown platitude, certainly he had contributed greatly to the liberation of the world, perhaps more so than any single individual, but to call him the savior was perhaps a bit of oversimplification. Regardless of what was thought of him, she knew he had endured much and acted with intrepidity, courage, and intelligence and that was more than enough for her.

"Alright then, I'll try to leave some hot water for the rest of the ship, but can't make any promises." He set her down, and a quick peck on her forehead later turned to the bathroom.

She was about to remind him that all the potable water on the ship came from identical tanks and that there was no separate tank where heated water was kept when she remembered that many human domiciles had an independent system for heating water ahead of time. It was an attempt at humor and upon further analysis she realized it was an indication that he planned on a very long shower. Part of her entertained the idea of joining him and, perhaps, upon her return from retrieving something for them to eat, she would do so. If she simplified, looked at the inclination through the aegis of Vulcan pairings, helping him bathe given the extent of his injuries and the degree to which his energy reserves were depleted was the logical course of action. However, this was nothing like a typical Vulcan pairing, they had been separated less than twenty days, but she felt intense pangs of longing for him during that time. She lacked the capacity to adequately explain what peculiar dynamic had caused the pronounced side-effect of his absence. Perhaps it was because he was human, his own emotionality so much better able to activate hers. She wanted to help him bathe because she wanted to be near and touch her mate, this was perhaps logically Vulcan course of action if one were to analyze what the mate bond was _supposed_ to be, of course she was certain that most marriages among her people weren't that idyllic.

She found that she was walking towards the galley at a quicker pace than normal, by her estimations she was moving at 173% of her normal pace. Based on the time of day, or rather, evening she knew her salad would have been prepared, but she would have to scrounge something appropriate for Trip. She chided herself mentally, if she had been thinking she would have called ahead to the kitchen to prepare him something, instead she had been so preoccupied by his injuries and level of exhaustion that she had neglected to do so. She had not been able to ruminate on her perceived failing as a spouse before she felt a nudge from him through the bond. It wasn't so much spoken as a feeling, something about it felt decidedly Trip-like, almost as if he was trying to reassure her, comfort her.

_Don't worry about it darlin'._

He would have said something exactly like that, simple and to the point, and of course he probably would have tossed in a self-depreciating joke she would have had been forced to probe him to understand, if only partially. Quite to her horror the Galley was full, most of the bridge staff was present, of course, bravo shift would be on the bridge and in the CIC now. She approached the steward trying to keep her back presented to the rest of the room, she had learned rather quickly that eye contact and facial recognition were common cues for humans to initiate contact or conversation, the act of not presenting one's face was a subtle way to dissuade would be conversationalists. Something about taking Commander Tucker something to eat made it seem as if she had cloistered him and would doubtlessly provoke speculation amongst the habitually curious humans of the crew. As it was, few of the crew actually knew the extent of her relationship with Trip. Hoshi, the paragon gossip monger of the ship, had informed T'Pol that of the crew she was aware of only 38% that believed that there was some form of relationship between her and the commander, of the remaining 62% that had not been directly privy to the conversation or informed by T'Pol or Tucker themselves, most believed that Trip had simply served as the provider of gametes for the purpose of her pregnancy.

Overt questioning, inquisitive eyes, lips whose edges seemed to ask before words formed on tongues, "what exactly is going on?" She had to dodge, misdirect, evade, anything that could be done to keep it from going to rumor to confirmed fact, confirmed fact to top media story. It wasn't just her dignity at stake, not just his or their baby's, it was the entire institution of their marriage that would be dragged unceremoniously on a slide for the inspection and dissection by any and all curious parties under the merciless and unflattering lens of the public opinion microscope. It was almost inevitable, Hoshi had put it into context with the most startling clarity a few days before.

"Of course people are surprised, most humans would probably think you are frigid T'Pol, its hard to grasp the idea of Vulcans as passionate beings that want to be loved physically as well as emotionally. We can't wrap our minds around the idea of a human and Vulcan couple, much less one that had produced a love child."

T'Pol had been compelled to remind Sato that she and Trip were, indeed, married under Vulcan law. As she understood it, among humans, the term "love child" had always referred to children conceived and born out of wedlock. While their bond was not legally or culturally recognized by human practice, she felt that their mutual recognition of their status vis-à-vis one another was more than sufficient to term them a married couple. Sato had quickly apologized for the perceived slight then explained that they hadn't planned the pregnancy that it had been the result of their profound affection for one another, thus the result of love. T'Pol found she could not contest this assertion, and acceded through her silence and the briefest nod.

Looking over her shoulder for the briefest moment she caught sight of the immutable trio of Mayweather, Reed, and Sato sitting at their traditional and inviolable table. Travis gave a brief nod in her direction which was mimicked by Hoshi and Malcolm, she turned back upon hearing the steward turning back, with a pair of covered dishes. She had not even had the opportunity to inquire what was available for Trip, clearly the triumvirate of junior bridge officers had anticipated this eventuality and had contacted the chef ahead of time to make concessions for the returning hero. It was one capacity in humans she constantly marveled at, their limitless ability to empathize and the extents to which they would go to visit anonymous courtesies on one another. Hoshi rose, walking over to the drink dispenser in a manner that suggested no additional motivation. Upon reaching earshot of the Vulcan science officer she spoke in a low tone, words she knew T'Pol would hear. Rather than English she spoke in a Shi'kahran dialect that was the form of Vulcan T'Pol had grown up with.

"Go to your husband."

She made no attempt at reply, knowing that none was necessary, this had been done more for Trip's sake than hers. Their support had been proffered without solicitation or pre-condition on their part when she had experienced the trauma of the recent weeks, now it was time for commander Tucker to be attended to. Gathering the covered plates onto a tray she appropriated flat-ware, and glasses. Approaching the drink dispenser she found that Sato had already acquired the drinks for her, and with surreptitious nonchalance placed them on the tray, taking the empty glasses and turning back to the drink dispenser. Again Hoshi spoke in a barely audible Vulcan.

"He's waiting."

"Arigato gozaimasu." T'Pol replied and moved to exit when she found herself inexplicably frozen in place before the entering Captain Archer. Laden as she was she did not expect what he said next. Perhaps he saw the tray and deigned to ignore it, perhaps he had missed it entirely, or, perhaps, based on what had happened in the infirmary a short time before, he had mentally suppressed seeing it and what it implied.

"Sub-commander, will you be joining me in he captain's mess this evening?"

"I cannot at this time, I must attend to commander Tucker."

Archer's expression soured at the mention of Trip. He nodded in spite of the frown creasing his face, and T'Pol felt a twinge of concern over what strange new animus there seemed to be between the two men.

"What is the commander's condition?" He asked dryly.

"He is suffering from severe sleep deprivation, critically low blood sugar, dehydration, an infection was beginning to develop in at least one of his injuries, and he appears to be mentally exhausted. Doctor Phlox recommended he sleep for at least sixteen hours but given his pronounced hypoglycemia I believed it would be prudent for him to eat."

Archer nodded again, "I guess its good he has you to take care of him, left to his own devices he'd probably be dead by morning."

T'Pol did not attempt to suppress the expression of unvarnished horror that crossed her face. The assertion was horrible, it almost sounded like he was wishing ill on Trip, and she found the idea making her unbearably uncomfortable.

"I should go attend to him." She said in a choked voice.

Archer held up a hand, his face showing resignation and contrition over his poor choice of wording, "I didn't mean it that way T'Pol. You know how Trip is, he'd be down in engineering checking everything out if given the choice, it'd probably be another twelve hours before he got some sleep. He just doesn't seem to know when to quick. Take care of him, alright? If you need to, take tomorrow off."

"The commander should be asleep for at least the first half of my shift, I see no need in suspending my duties for the day."

"Very well, but the offer stands should something occur." Archer replied.

"Understood, if you will excuse me?"

"Carry on."

T'Pol exited the galley and began to head for her quarters, feeling a profound sense of disquiet over the encounter. She began to ponder what ill will the captain seemed to suddenly possess for the chief engineer and was his safety now at jeopardy? She tried to stuff the thoughts away as she made her way to the turbolift, she knew he had sensed her discomfort and was carefully probing along the edges of her mental processes trying to determine what had happened. When she entered her quarters she heard that he was still in the shower and took the opportunity to begin a sub-meditative calming exercise. It was a series of rhetorical exercises, mathematical equations, a recitation of physical constants. If Trip's mental state began to degrade, if the emotions he was suppressing began to well up, she would need every modicum of her focus to help him through it. Ideally she should have meditated for several hours before his return to make sure she had thoroughly divested herself of residual emotion.

When she opened her eyes he was before her, naked save for the towel around his waist. She looked up into his eyes, pupils dilated and breathing heavy, she could feel the strange softened and muted sense of desire radiating from him. He pressed into her body, hands grasping her shoulders. She tossed Phlox's order that they abstain from any sexual activity out unceremoniously and began grasping onto the threads of desire, letting them begin to ignite her own want. Her hands came up to stroke along his upper arm, feeling the reassuring and beguiling sensation and texture of thick muscle under the skin. She surrendered easily when he began lowering her to the floor and instinctively parted her legs so that he could lay between them as he began what she was sure would be the usual foreplay; illogical, a waste of time, an unnecessary waste of energy...and so completely delightful.

The touch she expected never came, instead his fingers softly traced across her face and he planted soft kisses on her lips and cheeks. It was not the usual pre-sex ritual, but she found it strangely gratifying none-the-less. It continued on, his hands never grasping purposefully, the petting gentle and affectionate, and while she felt an overwhelming desire coming from him, it was unique, a specific want she had never felt from him before, it was unlike and conscious or unconscious desire he had ever projected. Unable to resist her own curiosity and the want that seemed to radiate from between her legs, in her chest, and at the back of her mind at the same time, she finally prompted.

"Did you wish to engage in sexual intimacy, K'diwa?"

He didn't reply as such, just made a small huffing sound that sounded like a negative as his thumb caressed her chin, and she finally understood. He longed for her, without a doubt, but it was something much more emotional and complex than even the deepest sexual need. "Can I just touch you like this for a while."

"Of course." T'Pol replied softly as the gentle petting from her mate continued.

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><p><strong>[! - Author's Note- !]<strong>

**With the final ending release from Mass Effect 3 finally going live and vindicating the hell out those of us who scoffed at the "its indoctrination" YouTube undergrad $0.02 psychologists who wouldn't recognize PTSD if it was accosting them with a grout saw and mortar trowel, I will be taking a short break from this story to continue The Cassandra's Dilemma: Book Two. I should alternate just about every other chapter. Expect the next chapter in Infinite Diversities: Book One in early mid July.**


	22. Chapter 22

**[! - Author's Note- !]**

**Okay, so I lied... I was working on the next chapter for The Cassandra's Dilemma Book 2 and hit a wall trying to work out a certain section, when the content of this chapter came to me. More dull exposition and needless flourid language, but thats how I roll. Needless to say I'll get back to TCD2 in short order once the stream-of-consciousness wears out on this story for a while.**

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><p>T'Pol awoke when the soft murmur of her mate's body consciousness became a loud buzz, before she fell asleep beside him she had erected mental barriers to keep any nightmares that might plague his dreams from slipping through into her mind. She was reluctant to try to dam off his mind, but it was almost certain to be a necessity. He had been blocking her during the fighting on Vulcan and if he had deigned to do so, whether consciously or unconsciously, it was a sign that he was trying to insulate her from something going on in his mental processes that could be detrimental. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, her attention drawn to the mechanical clicking sound in the corner of the room. He was sitting on the floor, back turned, clad now in a pair of boxer shorts after having chosen to sleep nude, perhaps to help compensate for the higher ambient temperature of T'Pol's quarters. She rose slowly, the barriers in her mind seemed to be refusing to fall, it was strange as she had never had problems with mental control in the past except during the worst episodes of her time with Pa'nar syndrome and when she had utilized Trellium D. After a few moments of trying it was then that she realized that they were not her barriers, they were his.<p>

She recognized the sound she was hearing now; a series of clicks and snaps, metal sliding against metal, pins and springs being placed in a series of frameworks and apparatus that allowed a simple application of mechanical energy to being a chemical reaction which would, in turn, have a very final effect on biology if properly implemented. She approached cautiously, wondering if perhaps the mental barriers he had put up were to hide some dark self-destructive intent. She remembered a reference to her rapidly growing fear in a human movie she had seen during the crew's "movie night", the term "eating a bullet" as the method of shooting one's self in the head as a method of suicide; traumatized humans did seem to have a proclivity for terminal self-destruction. Among her people suicide was exceedingly rare as to do so was to engage in perhaps the most singly pronounced illogical behavior possible.

He didn't look up from whatever had occupied his attention, instead continuing the frenzied activity of his hands, the clicking sound accompanying each gesture. Stepping in front of him she looked down and watched as he worked the slide, depressed the trigger then worked the slide again on his side-arm. The magazine and grip materials were arranged neatly in front of him along with a series of tools and mounting hardware. He had his eyes focused on the wall, his attention down in the tips of his fingers where he could feel the performance of the mechanical components without any external distractions. When she crossed the line he had fixed his eyes in, he looked up, an expression of muted surprise on his face. T'Pol cocked her head to the side, and gracefully sank to a sitting position in front of him.

"I couldn't sleep...woke up and had to do somethin' with my hands." He supplied, knowing the question that would be asked before she had even begun to annunciate.

"I could give you a sedative."

"Hate 'em, never feel right the next mornin'."

"That did not stop you from utilizing them in the past." She countered, specifically referring to the episode at the beginning of the Delphic Expanse expedition.

"Well, when the alternative is no sleep at all..."

She arched a brow at the reply, watching his attention once again drift to the weapon in his hand as he once again began loosening the barrel bushing to disassemble the weapon again. He completed the process with swift almost robotic efficiency and within moments was carefully manipulating the trigger assembly.

"What are you doing?"

"The trigger pull on this thing seems off, trying to tweak it a little, just enough tension to prevent accidentally discharge and give a clean trigger break, but loose and smooth enough to not effect target acquisition. I'm thinkin' about a two point eight pound pull would do the job just fine."

T'Pol sighed inwardly, he was nervous, afraid, confused as to what was expected of him. He really had no idea how to be a husband to her, what was expected of him, and in this new and strange territory it frightened him. In the past their marriage was so clandestine they seemed little more than lovers, but now they were to cohabitate and behave like a real couple, at least behind the closed doors and out of sight of the world. She didn't find the fear aspect logical, she had no more background in being a wife than he did in being a husband. In point of fact, he had infinitely more experience as lover or companion than she did, a fact she mentally chaffed at on occasion. The fact she had not been his first and would not, she reflected with some consternation, likely be his last bothered her far more than she knew it should.

"Trip..."

His face was already lowered and she could literally feel his barriers buckle and threaten to fall. His voice was choked, "I really need to finish this."

"There will be adequate time to complete your adjustments later, you need more sleep." She insisted softly.

He chuckled, a hollow sound coming from his throat, she could almost smell the moisture gathering in his eyes, "I never really was a good sleeper, 'bout five hours at the time is the most I can manage."

"You should make the attempt, you still are not sufficiently rested." She contemplated taking the pieces of the weapon from him, but given his stubborn streak that would just serve to prompt a bout of utter intractability from him. No, she would have to convince him to come back to bed, and she was fully prepared to leverage him with sex if need be. She steeled herself mentally, it would be necessary for her to maintain a high presence of mind to ensure it was she who wore him out and not vice-versa. He was given to a high level of post-coital energy and frequently was able to hop up from the requisite after-sex cuddling and petting to begin attending to various tasks.

"The most sleep I ever got at one time was when I had double pneumonia, I think one night I slept nine hours straight."

She could feel the emotional pain radiating through his barriers, a dull ache that promised to be crippling agony for a Vulcan should it be loosed. The necessity of beguiling him was now as much for her sake as for his. She wasn't entirely sure where this hurt was coming from and it was confusing her deeply, as near as she could tell he should be feeling pride, not emotional agony. She had to understand this, she was alarmed at how strong the emotions were to be so tangible in spite of the mental barriers.

Taking his face in her hands she cradled his jaw in her palms to stare right into his eyes. "Trip...what happened?"

He just shook his head, "I'll let you know when I've finished processin' it myself."

"Were the experiences that unpleasant?"

"Not all of 'em, got to see your mother and catch up a little." It was a hollow sounding reply, but he managed a simulacrum of a smile.

T'Pol shot upright and to her feet with a suddenness that made Trip jerk as if the deck plating had exploded beneath her.

"Darlin'?"

"My mother, I have not spoken with her since...the invasion began. I must contact her immediately." She remained fixed in place, staring down at her mate.

Trip just sat there, looking back up at T'Pol and silently wondered why she had not moved from the spot. Was she waiting for his approval, his permission? Trying as hard as he was to keep his own emotions in check he couldn't begin to determine what was going on in her mind. Saying something couldn't hurt, the worst that would happen would be some latent feminism would rear its head and chastise him, _I don't need YOUR permission_. He shrugged, waving a hand over to the computer terminal.

"Well don't let me stop ya'."

As if on cue she crossed over to the desk and sat down before the terminal, punching in communication protocols to connect her to her mother's home on Vulcan. She sat and waited for the connection to establish and the call to be received, the seconds taking intolerably long as she found herself worrying about her mother's safety. She wasn't sure if it was projection on her part or just her body language, but as the clicking resumed Trip commented flatly, "She's fine T'Pol, its just takin' her a while to catch the call."

"I strongly doubt it would take her this long to reach a comm-" Before she could finish her retort the image of her mother appeared in front of her.

"T'Pol, it is agreeable to see you." The elder Vulcan intoned in her slightly strained tone.

"Mother, it is agreeable to see you are well."

Behind her a series of clicks and the snap of the slide of the sidearm shooting forward drew T'Les's attention as she attempted to look over T'Pol's shoulder almost instinctively. Against a click, the sound of the slide being worked, another click, and the slide drawn back to place the hammer in battery again.

"What is that sound?" The elder Vulcan inquired, her expression betraying a bit of concerned curiosity.

Trip lifted his hand to be in view of the camera, "Just me, T'Les, don't mind me, just fiddlin' around with my sidearm."

"Charles, are you well? It was rumored you were injured during the fighting in Shi'kahr."

T'Pol turned as her mate stood, the injuries bright red against his comparatively pale flesh. "I took a few hits, nothin' serious."

T'Pol arched a brow, "You suffered two extensive disruptor burns and numerous smaller disruptor injuries in addition to shrapnel wounds, I would not categorize that as nothing serious, k'diwa."

T'Les arched an amused brow, "T'Pol, you should be _attending_ to your sa-telsu."

T'Pol flushed a slightly olive shade, the emphasis put on "attending" clearly implying that the attention she should be providing were of the sexual nature. How could she adequately explain it to her mother with Trip still in the room? It would be embarrassing enough to say it to her, much less in front of her spouse. He seemed to sense it from her, as he crossed from out of the camera's view he smirked slightly at T'Pol and grabbed a pair of running pants and a basic duty uniform undershirt.

"I'm gonna run to the galley to get somethin' to drink, you want somethin' darlin'?"

"Red tea, please." T'Pol answered.

"Honey or mint?" He was still smirking, almost grinning at her. The discomfort of having to tacitly confirm a parent's acknowledgement of one's sex life seemed to be embarrassing in any culture, regardless of how logically it could be explained away.

"Honey, please."

With a nod he exited the room, as the door slid shut behind him T'Pol let out a sigh then turned to glare at her mother who was doing little to hide her amusement at this point. "Mother, it is not appropriate for you to instruct me on my duties as a wife."

"It was my understanding that male humans had particularly pronounced sexual upkeep requirements." T'Les was dangerously close to allowing her amusement to produce an emotional response.

"Trip is a perfect gentleman." T'Pol countered.

"Your mate is a fine man, T'Pol. His actions and diligence likely saved my life and the lives of tens of thousands of other Vulcans. It has not yet been revealed by the high command but there is evidence that purges were taking place during the Romulan occupation and as many as two thousand were summarily executed, many others were brutalized and murdered by the occupation force." T'Les replied in a measured tone, the conversation once again become serious.

"He is emotionally tormented by what occurred on Vulcan, I cannot get him to share any information regarding it with me."

"Have you seen any of the images from Camp Kelly?" T'Les shuddered, a slight spasm as she looked away from the screen for a moment.

"No, I am not currently privy to what happened beyond what we heard over communications."

"T'Pol, the fighting was almost what could have been imagined from before the awakening. Thousands of Romulans and hundreds of humans died during the fighting, and it was under his command that it happened. As a being of emotion he must be enduring tremendous feelings of guilt and regret over what was his logical duty." T'Les was once again allowing a little bit of emotiveness into her speech, "You chose to marry a being of emotion, it is still your responsibility as a Vulcan wife to help him process these feelings."

"He is not allowing me to access his emotions right now." T'Pol answered, her voice indicating her chagrin at the situation.

"He is not allowing you?" T'Les was obviously confused.

"He has placed mental barriers around his conscious processes, I am not being allowed access to his mind."

"His level of discipline is higher than I would have expected from a human." T'Les mused.

"He routinely surprises me."

"Very well, it is a thing you will have to resolve between you two in time." T'Les' expression softened, "I have been informed of your pregnancy, it is an agreeable outcome, though I question the expediency with which you have decided to undertake this course."

"How do you know this?"

T'Les arched a brow at her daughter, "Charles informed me. It was premature, was it not? You had not entered pon farr, correct?"

"It was not entirely planned, mother. My emotions regarding Trip created a situation where I entered a pseudo-plak tow. Subconsciously I desired to become pregnant with his child, these desires fed through the bond to him and were projected back into my mind, at the time my body believed he was in pon farr and I responded accordingly."

"Intriguing, I'm sure the Science Academy would be interested in your experience should you ever feel comfortable with sharing the information." T'Les allowed her scientific curiosity to get the better of her.

"Mother..."

"Yes, T'Pol?"

"I feel very passionately about Trip, did you have similar feelings for father?"

T'Les lowered her eyes and took a deep breath, "I cherished your father greatly, there is not a day when I do not miss his presence and long to have had more time with him."

"Why did you not have more children?" T'Pol was certain she was treading into uncomfortably intimate territory, but she had to finally find some catharsis for this question that had plagued her for decades.

"Events just never transpired that way, T'Pol. Your father always tried my control as much as I tried his. It came to pass that the strength of our feelings for one another bordered on the illogical, we had to maintain a degree of detachment from one another to keep the emotions from overwhelming us." T'Les paused, "Now that you are a mother, I can tell you these things because I am certain you understand those types of feelings. It is the Vulcan heart, to love one's mate to the point of madness is our way, not even Surak wished to interfere with that."

"Did father know this?"

"Yes, it was why we held to the Vulcan way, touching and never touching, together but always apart. If he had been of weaker character, I am convinced you would have had many siblings."

T'Pol took a sobbing breath, feeling the loss of her father and empathetically her mother's longing for her long dead mate. "If our first born is to be male, I would like to name him for father. Do I have your permission in this regard?"

"I am certain he would have been honored, T'Pol, as am I."

"Thank you, mother." The younger Vulcan replied, her voice strained with emotion.

"T'Pol, you are picking up too many human habits." T'Les gently chided.

"It is a custom of theirs that is agreeable, the expression of gratitude is logical and honorable."

T'Les cocked a brow again, "Perhaps."

T'Pol took on a serious edge again, "Is Vulcan aware of our pregnancy? I imagine there would be resistance to the idea of a child of mixed heritage."

"As far as I know it has not been revealed, though I am sure the High Command will be forced to make a statement after the child is born."

"I fear the child may not be accepted as Vulcan." T'Pol calmly voiced the concern.

"Then raise the child among humans, despite their historical intolerances, I do not believe they would treat the child with anything less than reserved acceptance."

"But how then would the child learn what it meant to be Vulcan?"

"Perhaps it should not learn what it means to be Vulcan, it will be a child of our culture and theirs and it should decide its own path. If your child with Charles truly desires to learn what it is to be Vulcan, there will always be those among our people that will be willing to teach."

T'Pol nodded softly, "You assertion is logical, mother."

"I must make preparations for the day, there is much work to be done at the Science Academy. Peace and long life, my daughter."

"Live long and prosper, mother."

* * *

><p>Trip froze in his tracks as he stared back into the scowling moue of Captain Archer. He felt his chin instinctively raise a few inches, shoulders shifting back, chest out, it was like he was in parade review in front of a critical drill instructor. Part of him wished that Archer would just deck him, or chew him out, or shoot him or whatever it was that he clearly wanted to do and get it over with. He was relatively sure he would break before he could spend more than a few days walking on egg-shells, there was nothing he hated more than seething anger focused towards him, a huge blow-out that lent itself to catharsis was much preferable.<p>

"Commander, I was under the impression Phlox wanted you to rest."

"I woke up and decided I needed to get something to drink, sir."

"You're holding two drinks, commander." Archer kept his tone even.

"One of them is for sub-commander T'Pol." He winced as he saw the scowl deepen and prepared himself to be physically accosted.

"I trust the living arrangements are suitable?"

Trip swallowed, his mouth suddenly feeling very dry, "Yes, sir...it is...a suitable arrangement."

Archer shook his head, looking around the mess hall before speaking up, "What the fuck were you thinking?"

"Sir?"

"I knew about your reputation, Tucker, the girls always lined up for you. Hell, I tried to ignore it most of the time, even when you were rolling in the hay with the Kriosian princess.."

"Kaitaama, sir." Trip grimaced at his own response, if there had been a time for him to keep his mouth shut...

"Whatever...I overlooked that, but you just couldn't keep yourself in check...you had to fuck my science officer." Archer growled.

"Sir..."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Sir, its not like..."

"Shut your goddamn mouth! Be advised, I've had it up to here with you flaunting regulations, Tucker."

"Sir?"

"Shut up! I'm not finished!" Archer took a deep breath, clenching his fist, "I don't give a damn what happened to your sister, I don't care what happened to your home town, when you put on that uniform your first loyalty is to Earth, your second loyalty is to MCS, and your third loyalty is to me. And when you decide you can't keep your dick out of our cultural attaché you know who gets screwed?"

Trip closed his eyes, the muscles in his jaws bunching, there was so much he wanted to say but knowing this wasn't the time or place. He answered with his voice choked and gravelly, "You, sir."

"Wrong answer! You don't just screw me, you screw my XO, you screw everyone who may have known about it for not reporting you, you screw T'Pol, and you screw yourself, Tucker. Do you have any idea what would have happened to you if the Vulcan High Command wasn't so dead set on having your little symbolic marriage? You'd be out on your ass or in the stockade right now! MCS invested way to much in you, and you're willing to throw it all away to get another notch on your belt?"

"I love her, sir!" Trip blurted out.

"Shut up! Right now MCS thinks I can't control my crew, I can't keep my number two officer from breaking half the regulations we have to get his wick wet. It doesn't matter what the facts are, they already have their scenarios wherein you and T'Pol are fucking like rabbits every time someone's back is turned." The blood vessels in his temples were standing out now, his face screwed into an expression of indignant rage.

"It's not like that..."

Archer buried angry fists into his hips, "It doesn't matter! They already have it all figured out in their heads, half those bastards haven't gotten any they haven't paid for in the better part of a decade, so the second they hear you've knocked up our Vulcan science officer they're convinced you're using every chair on the bridge for sex furniture, and what do you think that does?"

"Sir...I'm sorry..."

"If you weren't such a goddamn good engineer and some big fucking hero I would have you off my ship in a second. You might not care about your career, but I care about mine and everyone else's under me, and you might very well have doomed me to captain for the rest of my career. I wanted to hit admiral at some point, Tucker..."

Trip swallowed again, "I don't think this will prevent you from hitting flag officer, sir."

"Were you willing to make that gamble when you and T'Pol were screwing around in the Expanse?"

Trip allowed a moment of agitation to get the better of him, this was his wife that the captain was talking about, "What the hell was I supposed to do?"

"Keep it in your goddamn pants, sailor!" Archer thundered.

Trip stood for a moment in stunned silence, he had never heard Archer bellow like that before, and then, involuntarily and almost to his own terror a grin started to creep across his face. His eyes shifted downwards, trying to look at the lips that were even know betraying him. It was all that was necessary to shatter the moment, rending the tension to shreds and forcing a different type of cathartic release. What started as a series of shakes turned into hearty guffaws from the captain, transitioning to a long and drawn out belly laugh, and finally shaking whimpering giggles as the laughter continued to lung exhaustion and an aching diaphragm. It went on for what seemed like an eternity, the grin still plastered on Tucker's face as Archer leaned against a table hyperventilating.

"Damn, I wish I could at least stay mad at you." Archer reached up wiping a tear from his eye.

"I could say something ugly about your dog, sir." Trip quipped with a grin.

Archer speared him with a glare, his expression suddenly deathly serious, "Don't push it, Tucker."

Trip froze again, eyes wide in surprised concern and discomfort, he remained frozen as if waiting for a blade to run him through for daring to imply a besmirching of the semi-sacred beagle's honor. Archer bit his lip, mouth pursed as a chuckle erupted from him as a suppressed snort, causing an even more confused expression to cross his engineer's face.

"Damnit, Jon, you're gonna give me a heart attack here in about a minute!"

Archer collapsed into another peel of laughter as the Engineer's expense. Trip mentally took into account that as long as Archer was laughing he wouldn't want to strangle him. He wondered how ridiculous this all was from the captain's perspective. It was no secret that _Enterprise_ was almost Archer's own little fiefdom and his personal expectation of loyalty from the crew had more than a few in the admiralty more than a little concerned. The problem was Archer got results, always did, no matter what the situation. Diplomacy, defense, first contact situations, combat, no matter what was thrown at him Archer always managed to get through. It was hard to say he was a genius in his own right, but he consistently made the calls that ensured success even when it was an ugly "win". There were those that said the ability to surround one's self with talent was a skill in its own right.

Archer looked up again, his eyes rimmed red, when he spoke his voice was much calmer, "This is your one pass, Trip...you better love her and treat her right or so help me God..."

"I will, sir. I've never felt about anyone the way I feel about her."

"Have you thought about what you're going to do when its time for the baby to be born?"

"I don't know sir, it wasn't exactly planned, it just kind of happened that way. I suppose we'll have to see what MCS does and make a decision from there."

"I'd prefer if you let the prevailing theory that you were just a sperm donor when T'Pol's biological clock started going-off persist or I'll probably be looking at a third of the female crew knocked up inside the next two months."

"Aye, sir. Would it be better if I resumed my old quarters?"

"The high command was rather insistent that you be allowed to cohabitate with T'Pol, furthermore it will be a necessity when she enters pon farr that you be able to attend to her in private." Archer nodded with a solemn expression.

Trip swallowed, remembering that Archer had Surak rattling around in his head for a few days during the first year out after the attempted attack on the Earth Embassy on Vulcan. He had never known exactly what happened, how the Katra had been transferred, it was not something Archer talked about, but every once in a while he would say something and it really didn't seem like it was Jonathan Archer in there. At the moment he sounded more like an old Vulcan sage than the alternately cussing and laughing captain he was moments before. Trip wasn't entirely sure why, but he suddenly understood that he had to get clear of Captain Archer, get clear of _Enterprise_; leave the nest, as it were, and make his own way in the world. He realized that all that would happen here now was a slow suffocation and soul death. It was strange to think it, much less say it, but he realized somewhere down inside he wasn't a boy anymore, he never really felt like a "man" before. It was impossible to qualify the statement, but the Trip that he had been felt no different to him than the Trip he had been as a child. Now, though, now he was a man, an adult, and as an adult he couldn't continue to live under Jonathan Archer, he had to break free and make his own path, not for his own sake but for that of his wife and child-to-be.

"I don't imagine that is going to be an issue, sir."

Archer didn't speak, just cocked a brow in a distinctively Vulcan way.

"T'Pol won't enter pon farr for another three years. MCS ain't gonna allow a child to be raised on a warship, so she'll have to accept a position on Earth or Vulcan to raise the kid." Trip offered, making the logical assumption. He paused for a moment before adding, "And I'm not about to be an absentee father."

"We should probably cross that bridge when we come to it."

* * *

><p>When Trip had returned to their quarters T'Pol noted how much more relaxed he had seemed, the turmoil that pounded to escape from the mental barriers had largely subsided. He began working the neural nodes in her neck unbidden, and she had graced him with soft satisfied sighs as he deftly worked the neuron bundles that forced muscles to relax and tension to seep out of her. The spike of curiosity at what had prompted his sudden shift in behavior had forced her to ask what had served to improve his mood. She was shocked at his declaration.<p>

"Me and the captain had it out."

It took a few minutes for him to explain that a good blow out often helped to soothe strained nerves and loose unresolved emotions. He mentioned nothing further about the nature of the conflict or what was said, and she decided he did not need to further elaborate, everything seemed adequately resolved and her mate's normal good humor seemed to have returned. She had her curiosity further piqued by the fact that he had not lowered his barriers. The lack of context forced her into overplaying her hand a short time into the neuro-pressure session. Confusing the satisfied sighs and grunts and his affectionate petting for sexual desire she began to undress, climbing across him prompting an expression of sheepish amusement from Trip.

"I just don't think I can manage that right now, darlin'. I'm sorry."

She produced a verdant flush, crawling off of him and redressing. Her embarrassment was more for forcing him to admit something most males found anathema rather than her misreading of his signals. For a short time she had been unable to make eye contact, until he placed a reassuring hand on her. His face was a mask of contrition, chagrined at what he perceived to be his ineffectuality to provide for the duties of a husband.

"I'm still tryin' to reconcile some things that are botherin' me. I promise I won't let this happen again."

The talked softly for a while until Trip decided he was feeling tired enough to go back to sleep and they crawled back into the bunk where his eyes quickly closed and he once again drifted into a quiet sleep. She lay beside him for a little over an hour before rising again to prepare for Alpha shift and the day ahead. T'Pol had showered quickly and donned her uniform leaving enough time for her to devote a half hour to meditation. Passing her empty space she shifted down into the body consciousness depths where the proto-ego presence of their child lay. It was dark and murky save for the glow produced by the globular light of the semi-consciousness of the offspring. Instead of finding the violent construct of Trip's subconscious she found a manifestation of her husband lying calmly asleep near the ball of light while the shadow-Trip skulked like a predatory mammal along the darkened edge of the light area.

Satisfied with the calming effect of being close to her mate and child's mental processes, she remained still until her internal clock informed her she had meditated long enough and she climbed back to a conscious state and left the quarters for the bridge. She was half way into her shift before she decided it was time to ensure Trip was awake for his debriefing with the captain.

"Captain, should I page Commander Tucker regarding the debriefing?" She asked as innocently as she could manage.

"Let him sleep, I've read his report, he was to the point in it, I don't think I need further amplification on anything. Besides, he's going to need to be rested for the next few days." Archer commented offhandedly.

T'Pol arched a brow, the captain's statement seemed to similarly attract the attention of Sato, Reed, and Mayweather. Kelby was running a tight shift on engineering and damage control, Trip had very little awaiting him in engineering beyond the routine concerns of chief engineer.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but what exactly is awaiting commander Tucker?" Reed finally asked.

"He got fast tracked for the Navy Cross, Navy DSM, two silver stars, and another purple heart for actions on Vulcan, and another pair of bronze stars, one for the magic he worked on the engines to get us here and another with valor device for the jump into Shi'kahr. They seem to figure there'll be no better time or place to pin them on him than in Shi'kahr at Camp Kelly in front of the High Command." Archer replied.

"This'll put him at how many silver stars?" Hoshi piped in.

"Four, and this will be the silver award on his bronze star with a second combat distinguishing device, his third purple heart, and his second Distinguished Service Medal." Archer bobbed his brows in amusement, "He's going to be walking around with more brightwork than the whole bridge crew combined if this keeps up. Hell, he's going to make the admirals look bad at this rate."

"Shame he only gets to wear a single V." Reed commented.

"Does Trip even have this dress whites? I don't think I've seen him in whites since forty nine." Archer turned to his science officer. "T'Pol?"

"Captain..."

Archer rubbed his forehead, realizing he was going to have to spell it out, "Do you know if Trip has a dress white uniform?"

"I do not recall any such item among his personal effects."

"Chief Garnier," Archer barked.

The Chief Yeoman stepped from his position to stand to Archer's left, "Sir!"

"Requisition a set of dress whites for Commander Tucker with appropriate award devices, if you please, chief." Archer handed a PADD with Trip's service record to the NCO.

"Aye aye, sir."

The Captain nodded, "Carry on."

The senior Yeoman made his way to the turbolift and exited the bridge, allowing a hush to once again descend on the bridge. T'Pol watched Archer carefully while feigning attention on her console, in the wake of Trip's revelation much earlier in the morning she was trying to determine what this sudden change in behavior on the part of the Captain signaled. He looked down to a PADD at his right, chewing idly at his left thumb as he did so. After a few moments he looked up suddenly, expression alarmed, he turned to his science officer.

"T'Pol, did you notice a saber in the Commander's possessions?"

T'Pol cocked a brow again, prompting another sigh from the captain.

"A high decorated ceremonial bladed weapon, about one meter long with a metal scabbard."

"No, Captain, I did not." She replied evenly.

"We can't let him stand in his dress whites without a saber." Reed declared.

T'Pol interjected, "I do not understand the logic of carrying a non-functional weapon to an award presentation."

"It's tradition, sub-commander, the saber has been part of officer regalia for over four centuries." Reed replied with more than a hint of indignity.

"Would not a side-arm be just as appropriate? The hand-gun has been part of officer attire on Earth for many centuries as well."

Reed shook his head, "Would it be appropriate for the priests on Mount Seleya to wear T-shirts and shorts?"

"Most certainly not, there is a long standing tradition as to what constitutes appropriate attire among the priests." T'Pol countered.

"It's the same for us, the uniform is traditional, almost two hundred and fifty years old, and the saber is an integral part of it." Mayweather supplied rather unexpectedly, perhaps to add a calm voice of reason not tempered by the slavish adherence to protocol or militarist dogma, or it could have been he was just offended at the implication that human customs were somehow inferior to those of Vulcan.

"Perhaps one could be constructed, there are doubtlessly significantly skilled craftsmen on Vulcan that would be willing to undertake the effort." T'Pol offered, realizing she was not going to win this argument and, perhaps, rightly so. It was uncouth to suggest a custom was inappropriate just because it did not fit with her Vulcan sensibilities.

"If you could check into that I'd appreciate it." Archer muttered.

"When will it be needed?" She inquired.

"Within three days." Archer continued to chew at his thumb, "I wonder if they would notice if he didn't have it."

"Who will be presenting the awards, sir?" Reed inquired.

"Bill Kim." The captain grunted.

"Lieutenant General Kim Soong-Yu?" Malcolm balked, straightening at the very mention of the name.

"That's the one," Archer nodded, "Chesty Puller reincarnated."

The fact that the old Korean War Horse would be presenting Tucker with his medals was no small matter. Kim Soong-Yu's reputation and career were legendary in MCS. He had fought just about every enemy that the United Earth Nations had faced in the past forty years. Nausican pirates, Orion slavers, Klingon raiders, various "liberation" armies on Earth and Terra Nova, skirmishes with Retellian privateers, Takret Militia, various Xantoran factions, the list was long and storied. Kim himself was often seen as a soldier's general, strict but fair, no-nonsense but with a dramatic streak when necessary and a repertoire of off-color jokes that was spoken of with almost mythic reverence by those that had served with him. He was MCS's go-to-man when something needed to get done and done thoroughly.

His nick-name, "Bill" had been born of an episode early in his career as a first lieutenant being interviewed by a reporter during a battle in the Cote d'Ivoire. The reporter stumbled over his given name Soong-Yu and the young leather-neck officer had replied in a heavy Korean accent, "Oh for the love of Christ, just call me Bill." From that point on he was Bill Kim to his colleagues and the soldiers that referred to him as "Ol' Bill" with admiration and affection.

"I bet we could find a Marine saber." Malcolm added with a voice reserved by lack of plausible alternative.

Archer physically turned in his seat to stare at his chief security and gunnery officer, his expression quizzically incredulous. "You honestly think that would fly?"

"I think the General might find it amusing, that way it wouldn't entirely be like he was presenting the award to a navy man, sir."

"Didn't they always say the Mameluke sword was earned, never given?" Archer grimaced.

"I'm pretty sure the Commander has effectively earned the right to carry one if only for one day, sir." Reed replied, patently British indignation in his voice layered between the respect for protocol and rank.

"Alright, but we'll shoot it past Hayes, maybe they can scrounge one up at Camp Kelly."

T'Pol spoke up, "Should I attempt to see if the appropriate saber can be produced by a Vulcan craftsman, captain?"

"Go ahead, but three days is going to be a narrow time-frame." Archer groused, then contemplatively, "I wonder if we should say something to the General, I'd hate for it to turn into a stink if he does have to carry the Marine toothpick."

"Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission." Sato quipped softly.

With that the bridge fell silent, there was a point to Hoshi's assertion. An officer like Kim would, of course, realize that on a Warship like Enterprise a man of Tucker's martial pedigree wouldn't waste the time with keeping a complete set of dress whites, and given the size of senior officer quarters, the Starfleet Naval Saber was a waste of space. Archer had one onboard, the size of the captain's quarters and the necessity of being able to present full dress uniform in diplomatic situations made it essential to have, but if there was one hold-over from the navies of old in MCS it was the tradition of being intensely superstitious. Once a saber had been presented it was not to be used by another officer, to do so would be to exchange misfortunes between the two officers involved. Archer dismissed the idea mentally, his saber would stay in his quarters for the time being.

* * *

><p>"Anything blow up while I was gone?"<p>

Kelby turned to see Commander Tucker standing in front of the Matter/Anti-Matter core in PT clothes, arms akimbo.

"Half the damn ship, you screwed up the core something fierce with that warp eight point one stunt, sir." Kelby approached Tucker and shook his hand, "Good to have you back, sir."

Tucker shrugged with a grin, "Way I heard it you ran things first rate, buckin' for a promotion?"

"Not a chance, sir...then I wouldn't have anyone to blame for wacky ideas screwing things up."

Trip chuckled and looked around, noting everything was, at least, in physical order. He had every confidence in Kelby's ability to run the department, but at the end of the day he wasn't terribly creative or willing to take very many risks. The junior officer could quote operating procedures by heart, knew the acceptable tolerances of everything and could crunch the complex calculus of warp principles a good shade better than the think-tank ayatollahs at MCS R&D. If only he had exhibited a willingness to do the patently stupid on the basis of a theory that was unsound at best but he _knew_ would work, he would be a perfect chief engineer for a cruiser like _Enterprise_. If the captain demanded more power, Kelby was the sort that would shut down other system to provide rather than tax the power plant beyond its design limits even thought he knew that their was a plus thirteen percent variance between what the engine was rated for and what it could actually do. The up-side to his brand of engineering was that things _didn't_ break when Kelby was overseeing them, and when something did break it was replaced quickly, efficiently and in accordance with accepted doctrine. That wasn't to say he was dogmatic per se, Kelby would readily admit that some of the components from off the drawing board did not and would not work as intended in a real world scenario and when a better method was devised he assimilated and utilized the knowledge with ease.

"How did that reaction mass consumption rate end up pannin' out?" Trip crossed his arms, feeling a slight tug in his injured shoulder.

"Turns out we were only eating deuterium at one hundred thirty eight point two percent of normal rate, not one fifty. Based on that I think we could recommend the protocols for all non deep patrol sorties." The younger engineer answered.

"That's still a pretty big number..."

"Yes sir, but way I calculated it, standard stores would still allow the same operating time for a ship provided it stayed within a fifty three parsec range of its berth. For system patrols and working defense cordons, you're still looking at three months of patrol time between refueling. That would allow the DDs and DDGs a quick response to any emergent scenario in their theater a whole hell of a lot better." Kelby turned to the console he had been utilizing and quickly punched up the tables, as usual he had everything meticulously documented.

Trip nodded, the figures and numbers were accurate to a fault, as was expected of the number two engineer. "Write it up and submit it, I'll put my name to it."

"Sir?"

"You came up with it Kelby, time to get some ink in the engineerin' journals, the admiralty is always tryin' to figure out a way to reduced response time and get ships sortied faster."

Kelby shook his head, flabbergasted. "Warp eight is your baby, sir, I can't take credit for this idea."

"Oh, they already know warp eight is my little brain storm, I'll put in the paper for the protocols, but you're the one who just came up with the solid burn numbers and implementation strategy, take credit for it."

Kelby stifled a grin, "Aye, sir, thank you, sir."

Trip nodded, then gave engineering another look over, sighing with boredom, hoping for something, anything, he could do to keep himself occupied. "Anything I should be aware of?"

"You've got a nice pile in the bright-ideas box, I weeded out the dumber ones, but there are still about thirty you might want to look over."

"Dumb? Like?" Trip smirked.

"I don't think we need a still in the hydroponics bay, even if it is to produce 'industrial application spirits', sir." Kelby fought the grin trying to cross his face, his brows knitting as he tried to control his face.

"Jeeee-sus, that one again?"

"You should see the excuse they came up with for permanently installing a forty eight inch display screen in the mess hall."

Trip rolled his eyes, "What did they say this time?"

Kelby cleared his throat, "Installation of a serviceable display would allow for ship status updates to be easily transmitted to the mess area during peak times when decibel level could prevent crew from hearing the ship intercom."

"Gotta admit, that's a pretty good excuse." Trip cocked a brow, arms crossed again.

"Problem was I overheard them when they were typing it up talking about how they could stream the games to it through standard network lines."

Trip chuckled, "Yeah, that's gonna be one we have to fire up to the captain."

Kelby nodded, his body language suddenly becoming fidgety and uncomfortable. He looked up at the commander and Trip noticed the younger officer's expression screw up into one of reserved discomfort. "Sir, I don't want to seem out of line but..."

"Spit it out, Kelby."

"Is it true about you and sub-commander T'Pol, sir?"

"Depends on what's bein' said." Trip tried not to sound unpleasant, but realized his tone was marginally confrontational.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'll drop it."

"If somethin's botherin' you, you should tell me."

Kelby sighed, shrugging as he did so, "There are rumors going around, sir. Some say that you and the sub-commander are romantically involved, some saying you're married, others are just saying you were put out to stud."

"Does it bother you, Kelby?" Tucker inquired in an even tone, eyes narrowed to get a better read on the lieutenant commander.

"Well, sir, when folks talk about my department head, I kind of want to belt them in the mouth, sir."

Trip let a muted smile spread across his face, "Don't let it bother you, let's just say T'Pol and I have a complex arrangement and leave it at that."

"That's strictly above board, correct sir?"

"Off the record."

"Aye, sir, understood."

The door to engineering opened, prompting both men to turn as T'Pol entered, she froze in place, feet apart, staring at Trip with obvious consternation.

"Sub-commander." Tucker offered affably, arms still folded across his chest.

"You are under orders from the doctor to be resting." Her tone was mildly accusatory.

"Just checkin' up on things, wasn't about to start doin' anything." Trip replied in a faux-conciliatory lilt.

"It is unacceptable for you to leave ou- your quarters until you are sufficiently rested." She was clearly striving to not sound like a concerned spouse, even one of the Vulcan variety, which would likely be indistinguishable from her normal behavior to the uninitiated or non-Vulcan.

"Were you lookin' for me, sub-commander?" Trip fought back a grin, tongue jabbed into his left cheek.

"You need to be fitted for your dress white uniform." She supplied.

"Dress whites? What'd I need them for?" He narrowed his eyes again.

"The award ceremony being held on Vulcan in three days, you are receiving several commendations." Her tone softened, "You also have not properly attended to your nutritional intake."

"And how do you know that?" Trip asked in a teasing tone.

"I checked."

Trip grinned, tongue thrust back into his cheek and turned part way back towards the core, arms still crossed. Kelby bit his lip, fighting back the smirk and turned back to Tucker with arched brows, "A very complex arrangement, sir..."


	23. Chapter 23

Valek looked back over his shoulder to the position Sub-Commander Surat occupied in the line that was being marched into the cargo-hold of a large orbital transport shuttle. His commanding officer seemed to have left what was left of his soul spilled out into the red Vulcan dirt along with the blood of most of their cohort. The final tally, the cost of trying to take Vulcan was 65% dead, 11% critically injured, and of the 24% that remained, less than 2% were uninjured. Valek wasn't sure how he had managed to avoid anything but a few nicks from shrapnel, but he had done so, his century was also mercifully spared the worst of the casualties. The fourth and sixth centuries had been wiped out entirely, every soldier dead from immediate action or as the result of wounds. What strange fortune to have survived, to have made it through so unscathed where he had literally watched the bodies collapse, fly, and come apart around him.

He had been certain that his time was up when the human reinforcements had captured them, forced them all to their knees while these brutal men walked slowly up and down the line with their weapons, their primitive and hateful weapons at the ready, always at the ready to dispense with them should the order come. Hands bound, lying on their knees, ready for the same type of execution as had been provided for Vulcans by Tal'shiar kill squads. Then the Vulcans would come, and walk up and down the line, speaking to a human officer in a tongue he could not understand. And in those coldly impassive faces of the Vulcans there was a rage that was carried only around their eyes, a guttering flame of wrath that seemed to lick at each Romulan it passed over, but it always passed down the line and away.

The exercise was repeated dozens of times, and Valek came to understand that they were looking for war criminals among the rank and file of the Romulan soldiery. The first day ended, and early on the second they were once again lined up, bound, and forced to their knees for the witnesses and victims to eye like sides of meat awaiting a butcher. It wasn't until the third day that a new group of prisoners arrived, Tal'shiar from their uniforms and when the Vulcans came they stopped, and extended the judge's sentencing finger. A human stepped forward, a knife in his left hand, a side arm of some sort in his right, and leaning the projectile thrower over the wrist of his left arm, he fired a single shot into the back of the sentenced head. He went down the line thus, repeating the act for the next seven before stopping, dropping a steel container from the grip well of the weapon and inserting another, flipping a switch on the side the upper housing of the weapon shot forward and he continued until all thirteen bodies lay face down in the sand.

Valek was certain he knew their fate then, eventually the finger would come up to them, and another one of these barbarians would repeat the same performance with them. He at least found comfort in the fact it would take him easily two or three times as long to complete the same task. But when the soldiers came in their earthen-colored uniforms and their pouches and body armor and their cruelly black weapons covered in a layer of concealing dirt, they were all stood up and lead back into the tents and were never brought out to kneel in line again.

An Andorian stepped out in front of Valek, his arm coming up to halt him as the remainder of the column progressed into the belly of the cargo transport. The blue antennaed being looked back to a pair of overseers, one of his own race and another one of these humans and received a nod. The Andorian pointed toward another row of seats while his Vulcan counterpart stopped the adjacent column. Valek continued onward with his commander and the next seven behind him towards a row of transport couches where another Andorian pushed them firmly into their seats.

"Do you think they're going to kill us?" Surat finally spoke.

"I think they would have done it while they still had us in the camp, transporting us elsewhere to do it would just be a waste of time." He responded, surprised at how dispirited and tired he sounded.

The Andorian shouted something, the only thing it could have been was a demand for silence, and both men immediately complied. Valek closed his eyes, thinking of his home on Romulus, the way the sky would turn gray when the winter set in and the winds would whip from off the ocean and he'd watch the various avian species seemingly suspended in mid air on the gusts as the sound of waves breaking on rocks below muffled their cries. He thought back to the nephews and nieces he so adored that he would never see again. The warm hospitality of his brother and the beautiful smile his sister in law would always greet him with whenever he would visit. He would miss the disapproving but understanding grunting of his father as he would have invariably asked when he was planning to quit the military and enter a "respectable" trade. Never again to taste his mother's cooking, never again to share a glass of kali-fal with his cousins. Whatever road lay before him now, it was the road to the end of his life, of this he had absolute certainty and his soul ached when he thought of all the things left unsaid, all the opportunities squandered, all the regrets and second guesses and moments taken for granted.

He was on the verge of offering a prayer to whatever powers that be when a voice speaking in broken and poorly annunciated Romulan spoke up. Valek turned, as did most in the compartment, to look at the door leading to the cockpit where a human soldier in full combat equipment stood.

"Attention! Transport embarkation to warship orbiting. There will go to take, Weytahn. Prisoner of War camp for collection, there held you be will until accords with your government made."

"His Romulan is terrible." Surat whispered, seemingly ignoring the fact that he could at least speak a semblance of it.

"At least we can understand him, sir."

* * *

><p>Trip tightened a white glove clad hand around the scabbard of the Mameluke sword that hung at his waist. The presence of the Marine officer sword still bothered him, it felt disrespectful and highly inappropriate to him, he wasn't a Marine, even if he had shed more than his share of blood along side them. When Major Hayes had brought the appropriated weapon to the Garrison XO's office, Trip had almost refused to don the decorative blade. General Kim had made it abundantly clear that he wasn't going to stand on regulations in this regard, nor would he refuse to render due honors to the commander for wearing a piece of Marine issue when it was clearly not appropriate. The combination cap's leather clad brim shaded red-rimmed eyes that even now he wished he could hide from everyone.<p>

T'Les made another minor adjustment to his collar, the sixth so far as she fussed over every minute detail of his appearance. She had requested, and received, a copy of the accepted procedure of wearing the Dress White uniform and was making sure with every ounce of her Vulcan precision that her son-in-law wore it to a standard that would serve as paragon. "Your discomfort is evident, Charles."

"I'm sorry, I just..." He closed his eyes, trying to fight a reaction threatening to show on his face, "This just feels wrong to me."

"Your people need an exemplar on which they can hang their expectations and find solace in their loss. The deaths of those who fought here wound your entire species; it is, therefore, necessary to have one to whom they may look to symbolize their courage and sacrifice."

Trip shook his head slightly, "This should've been Colonel Shelby."

"Colonel Shelby is neither alive nor dead, he is inadequate as a symbol. Your bravery was neither an expectation nor a requirement, that is why you are the symbol they need. The ethos of sacrifice is not unknown to us on Vulcan, we understand that a sacrifice should be honored."

"I'm still alive T'Les, I didn't sacrifice anything."

"You sacrificed more than you are willing to acknowledge. I may not be your mate, Charles, but I can sense your pain."

"I'm tryin' to make it go away, but I just can't stop thinkin' about what I did here, how many died because of me."

"You must share this pain with your wife, she will help ease it."

Trip choked out a reply, "I can't do that. I don't want her to... I can't have her see what I've done."

"Yes, you can. You must have more faith in my daughter than that." T'Les took a step back and once again surveyed what her adjustments had wrought, "You are not totally dissimilar from my husband in that way, Charles. His duty required him to engage in acts that were unpleasant to him and he had to share the pain of those actions with me. The fact you can process some of these feelings yourself makes T'Pol's task easier. Trust her."

Tucker nodded, "Yes, ma'am."

A knock at the door diverted his attention, it was the old swinging hinge style that had all but rendered obsolete yet persisted in the headquarters building of MAC-V as some nod to an older time and serve as a sort of living museum for Vulcan of Earth's past.

"Enter."

A Marine MP opened the door and leaned in, the bright red and yellow brassard contrasting sharply with the desert colored MCCU. "They're ready for you, sir."

"Thank you, corporal, understood."

"Aye, sir." He closed the door, leaving the room once again quiet.

"Further procrastination will not help ease the stress of this event, Charles, it would be best to complete the task and be done with it."

Trip nodded, "Yes, ma'am."

Taking a deep breath he crossed to the door and opened it, standing aside for T'Les to exit, "Ladies first, ma'am."

T'Les cocked an amused by slightly disapproving brow, "An earth custom?"

"At this point I guess you could just say a southern one...not a whole lot of basic gentleman's etiquette left these days."

T'Les exited through the door and took a waiting wing position, Tucker followed and closed the wooden throw-back to a by-gone era behind him. The MP to the right of the door went from the rigid "at ease" to full attention as Tucker began down the hall. T'Les waited a moment and fell into step behind him off and to the right roughly two and a half meters back. Malcolm and Hoshi were already waiting for him, and stepped into place in the ad-hoc procession down the strangely cramped feeling hallway.

"Well Commander, I suppose you won't need to do PT for a few days, they're going to be pinning about a hundred kilos worth of metal to your chest."

Trip felt his teeth grinding as the unexpected consequence of the crass observation brought up a new wave of feelings of guilt. He braced himself for another fusillade of crass humor but something mercifully stymied the Briton before he could begin a second volley. He almost heard the next round choke in Malcolm's throat, maybe T'Les had given him that Vulcan Evil Eye or Sato had caught him in the ribs with her bizarrely sharp elbows, or perhaps his teeth had been loud enough to be audible. The suspicion as to what or who it was, was quickly diverted by Sato.

"We're very proud of you, commander."

"Thanks." It was the best he could manage in the situation, each step towards the parade ground bringing further home what these medals had cost in terms of lives lost.

They continued in silence until they reached the large doors leading out of the Headquarters building, the white walls bathed in the muted orange of Vulcan's sun streaming in through the large windows high in the vaulted foyer. Another pair of Marine MPs, crisp uniformed and rigid with discipline opened the doors as Trip slowly walked out onto the wide concrete dais. Forty meters away a low stage sat on the uncharacteristically green lawn of the parade grounds and the throng of Human and Vulcan observers that came to bear witness to the event was neatly arranged before it. The abundance of cameras and video recorders was immediately evident and Tucker found himself feeling even more uncomfortable at the idea of being an ersatz icon, a poster child for MCS heroism. Part of him wondered what would happen if he was to suddenly become ill, a complication of the injuries and fatigue that would force the award ceremony in-doors where he only have a handful of spectators for the mawkish proceedings.

His knees wanted to go out, and he was half tempted to let them do so when he noticed T'Pol standing on the stage next to Lieutenant General Kim. She wasn't in uniform, instead wearing the same bridal gown she had worn for the Koon-ut-kal-i-fee. She was beautiful, maybe even more so than he remembered her being that day. She would be pinning the medals, not Kim, he would read the citation and T'Pol would be the one actually pinning the awards. He couldn't try to spare himself now and bring shame to her as a result. Define being a man; dealing with being the center of this circus if only to spare one's wife. He crossed the intervening space, before he was 10 meters from the steps leading up to the stage the assembled Marine and Naval personnel were called to attention and as one, the multitude of booted feet snapped together with a stomp.

Trip ascended the steps and crossed to the position of honor, marked by a tape X on the stage, chin held high as he tried to stare above and away from those witnessing the event. His left hand remained tight around the scabbard of the Mameluke saber, as he stood rigidly straight, chest out, shoulders back as would be expected of a hero and commander of the MCS Naval branch.

T'Pol was struck by how appealing she found the uniform, the white of the high collared jacket, trousers, gloves, and shoes accented with the five gold buttons and the black and gold of epaulets. The right side of his chest covered in the neat rows of medals while high on the left sat the ordered lines of award ribbons. The hat which concealed his hair and sat low over his brow, oddly shaped and impractical, added a strange sort of distinction to the ensemble. She reflected with some resignation that the craftsman she had contacted about acquiring a uniform appropriate saber had indicated they could not possibly replicate the item on such short notice given the level of detail and their assertion that failing to mimic the specifications exactly would be illogical. The exchange had gotten heated at one point, when T'Pol had questioned the skill of the craftsman if he could not adequately mimic a human design in the allotted time. The elder Vulcan had replied, tersely, that human designs were far more complex with a finer attention to detail than anything Vulcan produced and it would be insulting to their cultural heritage to attempt anything less than a perfect duplication which would require weeks of precision work without machines already programmed to produced the designs in the materials needed.

In the end T'Pol had found herself embarrassed and chastened by the fact she had once again overlooked the cultural significance of Earth customs. She suddenly remembered a human saying; familiarity breeds contempt. She didn't want to believe she felt contempt towards humans, but it was perhaps true that she had begun to take their complexity for granted. Rather than trying to better understand it, she had simply decided to relegate it all under a catechism, viewing it all as eccentricity. This uniform was, indeed, eccentric and impractical, but despite the illogic of it all she found it agreeable and her husband was intensely appealing to her while wearing it.

"Please remain standing for the national anthem."

T'Pol clasped her hands in front of her as she straightened further, eyes cutting over to her husband whose right hand snapped to the brim of the uniform hat in his meticulously rigid salute as the twenty one piece band section began playing the first notes of "Simple Gifts". The MCS personnel present adopted the same posture, saluting while the small contingent of human civilians placed their right hands over their hearts as the music played. T'Pol noted with darting eyes the muted amusement of the other Vulcans present save for one that wore a human business suit and was standing amid the human civilians present. He, unlike the other Vulcans also had his hand over where his heart would be were he human and it struck T'Pol as quite peculiar that he would render honors to the human anthem and flag.

When the music died a Marine captain crossed to the podium, "At ease."

The Starfleet personnel spread their feet, hands clenched behind their backs. T'Pol noted with some amount of amusement that both of Trip's immediate superiors were having to render honors to their subordinate. Commander Hernandez was still technically Captain Hernandez by virtue of the brevet promotion, the _Columbia_ had returned the day before after having lead a task group that had linked up with Andorian and Vulcan forces pursuing what remained of the Romulan fleet. Three days prior they had received orders to break pursuit and help consolidate the defensive theater in the immediate area of Andoria, Weytahn, and Vulcan with the _Columbia_ group ordered back to Vulcan to await orders to return for repair and refit.

The marine captain began reading the words of the citation for the first of the two bronze star awards. It was estimated that it would require approximately five minutes for the reading of the citation, presentation of the award, and extension of honors for each of the medals he was to receive. General Kim had instructed her in the proper procedure for pinning on the medal; its placement, its acceptable proximity to the award immediately below it, how much space to each side the other medals were to be pinned, and the acceptable tolerance of angle. She had absorbed it all with little effort but the gravity that MCS placed on the presentation was made evident. Her choice to wear her bridal dress was calculated, she intended to make it evident to the Vulcans assembled here that the hero of Shi'kahr was her mate and that she found pride in their union.

When the citation reading was finished, she lifted the medal from its place on the display board and covered the four steps to Trip, pinning blue and white striped red ribbon in place. She allowed herself a glance up at her mate who gave her a barely perceptible smile and said in a low tone, "You look beautiful, darlin'."

As she stepped back and away for the first round of salutes, she felt her face beginning to flush slightly, the tips of her ears positively burning. The remainder of the ceremony seemed a blur as he allowed small ribbons of adoration, affection, and tightly contained want drift through his barriers and into the bond. Her focus was diverted from the emotions from her mate on several occasions during the citation reading when phrases like "at great personal risk" and "repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire" were spoken. It seemed he had indeed played down his role in the actual fighting, a fact that should have been evident given his typical self-effacing humility and the fact that more than once when they had contacted him he was actively involved in a fire fight.

Forty two minutes and seven medals later, the ceremony was concluded with a final round of salutes in which General Kim himself presented first honors, holding his salute until Tucker lowered his, then reaching forward for a firm handshake.

"Son, you've earned the sword..." The older officer said under his breath with the last remaining vestiges of a Gyeongsang accent still lingering in his voice.

"Thank you, sir."

"You've got you a fine woman," The general looked over to T'Pol and grinned back at Tucker, "A bit uptight...but a fine woman."

Trip grinned, "Sir, you have no idea."

Kim turned to see Captains Archer and Hernandez approaching, "Captain Archer, how much do you want for your chief engineer? I need battalion commanders with brass ones as big as his."

"He's not for sale General." Archer grinned.

"Yet?" Kim shot back.

"Yet..." The _Enterprise_ commanding officer replied.

"I think MCS might want to make him skipper of his own boat before they're done with him, general." Erika added.

"Captain Hernandez," Kim nodded, "heard you chased those Romulans all the way back to their front door."

"Back to their block, at least, but I was given strict orders not to orbitally bombard their home world, leave it to the admiralty to take all the fun away."

"That's a shame, sounds like we let them off easy." Kim replied.

"Trip." Archer nodded.

"Cap'n."

"I've been instructed to give you a seventy two hour liberty pass. Probably be best if you went up to the ship and got changed, it starts in two hours."

Tucker glanced over at T'Pol, not moving his head but making eye contact.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but aren't I needed on Enterprise?"

"Nope, you and T'Pol are both off my boat for seventy two hours, we've got arrangements already made at a resort in Vulcana Regar for the both of you." Archer countered, his voice affable but Trip could still see a twinkle of irritation in his eyes.

"With your permission, General, there are a few things I'd like to go over with the captain about engineerin' before I light out, sir."

Kim nodded, he'd been around long enough to know when an officer had to plea off before calling another member of his or her command on what they perceived as bullshit. Tucker had been savvy enough to do it in a way that would insulate him and his commanding officer while he did so. "Go right ahead, Commander, I need to make nice with the locals."

Trip returned the nod and descended from the stage, Archer sighed and turned to follow. The captain noted the speed of Tucker's pace, knowing a sure sign of agitation when he saw it. Reading Trip the riot-act days earlier had done some to help alleviate the irritation he was feeling for his chief engineer, but nothing more than passing pleasantries had been exchanged outside of requirements of their respective duties since then. Archer was still pissed, and he was beginning to suspect that Tucker was harboring a seething if muted anger himself. He would never admit it to anyone, but he was more than a little scared of Trip. He wasn't threatened professionally, nor did he view the engineer as romantic competition if it came down to it, but there was a kind of subdued violence about Tucker that he knew lay just beneath the surface and he secretly feared could some day be directed at him. He knew that if it came down to it, Tucker wouldn't even need the ornamental sword at his left hip to do the deed. Trip was more than capable of killing with his bare hands if things turned violent. For years he had completely overlooked the fact, just assumed that whatever killer instinct Trip possessed had been left on the field during the 47 war. He had always dismissed the story of the Xindi Reptilian that had been dispatched as an exaggerated tale spun by the engineering and damage control crew to make it sound like they worked under the toughest son of a bitch in MCS.

Tucker stopped and turned when he reached the first step of the headquarters building, turning to face him, hands on his hips, feet apart in a clearly irritated contrapposto. In his full dress whites, the abundance of medals, and with his confrontational posture Archer almost felt like he was about to be dressed down by a superior.

"What the hell, Jon?"

"Captain..."

"What?"

"It's Captain." Archer replied sternly, trying to salvage what he was certain was going to be a spiraling out of control situation before it could turn ugly.

"What the hell is goin' on?" Trip ignored the invoking of protocol, rather than irritation, Archer found himself growing more worried. He was losing control over his engineer and former friend. Former, that was it exactly, he wasn't Trip anymore, he was Charles Tucker III, the shield of pedagoguery that had once served to insulate him from the consequences of forcing people he considered friends to do things that were dangerous, hurtful, or morally questionable was gone. Tucker had become a man, his equal.

"The orders came from-"

"Bullshit! What the hell is this? We've got a ship up there with combat damage, a warp core that was pushed well beyond its build specifications for way too long, and belligerents out there that have made their willin'ness to engage in acts of unbridled aggression abundantly clear and they might still be combat effective. So tell me how the hell it makes sense to toss two of your senior officers off the ship for a long weekend?" Trip extended a recriminative finger, like a dagger ready to plunge into Archer's chest.

"This is from the admirals, you have a problem with it, take it up with them."

"Don't treat me like an idiot. They'd have never issued this order without you sayin' somethin'!"

"Alright, fine. Whatever it is between you and T'Pol, I don't want it on my ship. It's bad enough that you two get to share quarters, to say nothing of the fact that she's pregnant, but I'm not about to have you two screwing around every chance you get. Do you have any idea what you're doing to morale? Half the women on the ship are pissed you picked the Vulcan and the other half is wondering how its fair that you and T'Pol get to be the only ones to skirt the fraternization rules out in the open. So get it out of your system, we've got a four month patrol of the AO outside of known Romulan space coming up at the end of next week and after that, T'Pol is off the ship. I'm not sure what's going to be done with you, but you get it out of your system, understood?"

Trip grit his teeth, nostrils flaring, "I _never_ once allowed my relationship with T'Pol to interfere with my duty. Four weeks ago on liberty, when she got pregnant, was the first time we shared a bed since the weddin' night."

"And its going to be the last time until you're both off my ship, you're on separate rotations until she's gone."

"You think I can't control myself? We didn't get more than a kiss'r two from the time we got back from Vulcan for redeployment until the liberty we got durin' the retrofits."

"And the expanse?"

"Don't go there." Tucker shook his head, his face stony in a way that felt imminently dangerous.

"Look, you have three days, we've got you a suite where you two can be alone all you want, you can go at it for the next seventy two hours straight for all I care, but don't bring it back onto my ship."

Trip shook his head, turned and walked away, fists clenched. Archer took a deep breath, letting it out quickly, realizing he'd just effectively killed what was possibly left of their friendship. Why hadn't the dumb bastard put in a transfer request off of _Enterprise_ back when they were first married? Archer knew he would have been angry at the request, would have likely been even madder when he found out that it was because of T'Pol. But chances are the anger would have passed. Love was strange, Archer knew that, he was still holding a torch for his XO despite the fact that he'd seriously considered coming onto T'Pol more than once. He'd had a few flings over the year, he was pretty certain Erika did too, but he never felt anything remotely like what he felt for Hernandez, even after all these years. It was over now, another part of his life had been destroyed by duty. Erika was still out of reach, his shot at flag officer was in jeopardy because he hadn't been more observant, and he'd lost his best friend. All that was left now was to head back up to _Enterprise_ and get blind, stinking drunk, maybe he could get Hernandez to come over from _Columbia_ so he could pour his heart out. He wasn't sure why but he was feeling incredibly lonely.

* * *

><p>T'Pol's eyes widened and she rolled her head down and to the side almost as if in physical pain. The sudden spike of rage coming through the bond was startling, it only took her a moment to realize what the source was. The dam of his resolve was starting to buckle, and if his barriers were to collapse here and now, she was relatively certain she could not be able to maintain her composure. In turn her reaction would bleed over into him and they would both lose the ability to control themselves. She wasn't sure what that would entail but it was certain to be unseemly and compromising. It was absolutely necessary she go to him and attempt to comfort him, calm him, help him process this new source of anger if nothing else.<p>

She was standing amidst a group of her people while her mother clarified the significance of some of the awarded medals. T'Les had become quite learned in matters involving humans in the past months, mentally devouring any information she could find in order to better understand her daughter's relationship with one. They could never understand the raw unprocessed emotionality, there would be no reason to attempt to explain it to them. The fact was that he needed her even as he tried to force the feelings of anger back behind his barriers with all the other negative emotions he had untidily warehoused there.

"Whio'naks nash'veh bolau sa-telsu." T'Pol muttered quietly to her mother.

T'Les simply nodded. "Sa-telsu'tu haltor"

T'Les could already feel the disapproving looks from the other Vulcans around here, mostly distant relatives and a few colleagues. Maybe it was logical, her daughter was intelligent, healthy, and quite capable even by Vulcan standards. She had an extensive background in both academics and operational dictums and would have made a fine match for any number of unattached males. If her presence on Vulcan before her kal-i-farr had been widely known there likely would have been other challengers for the right to be mated to her. She was relatively certain now that Charles would have triumphed against any number of competitors but had it been between Koss and any of a multitude of others there would have certainly been deaths.

"It was illogical to consent to your daughter being mated to this human." Stivek, a cousin from her father's side declared.

"It was not my place to consent or dissent, T'Pol was an adult capable of making her own decisions. There comes a time when a Vulcan must choose his or her own way, we are not to be slaves to our parents' desires." T'Les countered calmly.

"So you would have preferred she have been wed to Koss?" This time it was T'Kil, her neice. T'Kil was still unattached despite being seven years T'Pol's senior. There was some concern in the family that she would remain so as no suitors had yet appeared.

"It was logical to believe that T'Pol would have been better suited being mated to another Vulcan, but she has great affection for Charles and he likewise for her."

"They will never be able to produce children." Stivek accused, more than a little emotion beginning to show in the form of anger.

"I would not count on that."

T'Les turned to see an approaching Vulcan male wearing a human business suit, after a moment she recognized his face. He was an unmistakable match for his uncle, her late husband. She had only met him once when he was a young boy, but the family resemblance was unmistakable, and something about his eyes reminded her of the emotive child she had met sixty years prior.

"Suvak, it is agreeable to see you."

"It is agreeable to see you, toz'ot. When I discovered commander Tucker was mated to a Vulcan I had no idea it would be our own T'Pol." Suvak unbuttoned the suit jacket and stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, a distinctly un-Vulcan gesture.

"You choice of clothing is unusual, I had not thought human styles had been adopted among our people." Stivek declared, the venom in his words obvious.

"This is appropriate attire for my station with earth's governmental concerns." Suvak replied with brutal candor.

"How do you know the commander?" T'Kil inquired, trying to change the subject.

"I am afraid that is classified." He replied, stony faced.

"What precisely is your role with the earth government?" A female Vulcan roughly T'Les' age asked.

"That is similarly classified."

A human approached Suvak, leaning close and whispering something. He was tall even by human standards with the brutally short hair of an enlisted marine but casual civilian attire; a pale blue button-down shirt and dun colored trousers, sleeves rolled up part way to reveal muscular and deeply tanned forearms and the lower edges of a human tattoo. It took a moment but then T'Les noticed the compact assault rifle hanging at his side from a strap around his shoulder.

"I must ask your pardon. A matter has arisen when requires my attention." Suvak declared before taking off his jacket and beginning to roll up the cuffs on the sleeves of his shirt. Another human, similarly garbed to the first approached and handed the Vulcan a short-barreled rifle similar to that carried by the first and took the jacket. Suvak, gripped the charging handle and ripped it rearward, putting the weapon in battery, a gesture that shocked the assembled Vulcans more than just a little. Within moments seven other humans had closed to around the lone Vulcan male and he began issuing orders.

"I believe it is safe to say that his position is one associated with covert operations." T'Les commented with a hint of amusement, it seemed it ran in her late husband's side of the family.

"Solan was very tumultuous indeed." A voice cracked by age and as dry and unforgiving as the planet that had produced it came from behind. The other Vulcans present looked behind T'Les and quickly made their respects but she did not, herself, turn knowing who it was.

"I see you have come, mother." T'Les intoned.

"You cannot see a thing with your back turned, my daughter."

"Then perhaps the more logical line of questioning should be why have you come?"

"I hear my granddaughter is mated to a human, a warrior at that, I would come to see this human. Curiosity is an indulgence that at my age should not longer be painted with logic."

"Her mate is a man of science, an engineer of great skill." T'Les countered, still refusing to turn.

"Was he not just decorated in that human ceremony for killing many of the Bird worshipping fools?"

"No, mother, the awards were for bravery, intrepidity, and intelligence in the face of the enemy." T'Les countered, feeling strangely protective of her son-in-law, a fact that was no doubt exacerbated by the presence of her mother.

"Human concepts...but I suppose it is true, no point in awarding them for killing, it is already something they are good at."

T'Les spun around, ready to begin one of the characteristic spirited "debates" that had long been a hallmark of her family when she saw her mother's amusement. It was something around her eyes that had always changed slightly when she found something amusing or agreeable, a softening of the muscles, a slight squint with raised brows that pulled at her cheeks and almost formed what humans called a smile.

"I was not invited to the kal-i-farr, daughter."

"It was a koon-ut-kal-i-fee, mother. Commander Tucker fought Koss for the right to be mated to T'Pol." T'Les corrected.

"Now I am thoroughly displeased at having missed it."

The matriarch was attended by a Vulcan male close to T'Les' age, it took her a moment to recognize her brother, the years had clearly not been as kind to him as they had to her. He made no attempt at seeking acknowledgement, perhaps he was still bitter of their family schism that had been created when she decided to marry Solan 71 years ago. Her mother had been the loudest in her disapproval, but that was her way, it always had been. T'Les' own father had not been her mother's intended, so in a way T'Les had continued what would become a family tradition when T'Pol chose commander Tucker over Koss. T'Les' intended had been a friend of her brother Skel, as such his feeling of betrayal when she opted to marry the emotive and dashing, as Vulcans go, Solan had, perhaps, been the greatest.

"Well, where is he? I must give my approval." The Vulcan matriarch crowed.

"It is too late for that, mother." T'Les chided in return, allowing her irritation to be plainly known.

"Nonsense, the marriage can be annulled since they have not formed a bond."

"They have bonded, T'Pol is already pregnant with his child." T'Les deigned the familial relation of those present such that she could reveal her daughter's condition.

"Fascinating."

"I fail to see how that is possible." Stivek retorted.

"Perhaps I can have T'Pol confirm the news, or perhaps her husband would do so." T'Les replied with unvarnished venom.

"Please do, I would like to see my granddaughter as well as her mate." The matriarch fired back archly, spearing Stivek with a glare.

"Very well." T'Les replied, and turned to follow the route her daughter had taken to the Headquarters building.

* * *

><p>"Commander Tucker."<p>

Trip opened his eyes and turned, to see a familiar face in unfamiliar clothing. T'Pol had been doing her best to help calm him, her mind gently brushing against his working around the barriers rather than trying to go through them. His anger with captain Archer had been the first thing she had felt from him, and while she did not attempt to dispel the rage, she did try to sooth it.

"Suvak..." Trip gave him the once over, taking in the image before him, "nice outfit."

"It comes with the territory."

"This is my ko-telsu. T'Pol, this is Suvak." Trip grinned in spite of the anger still gnawing at him.

"It is agreeable to see you, cousin." The SID operator intoned calmly.

"Cousin?" Trip furrowed his brows.

"He is the son of my father's brother." T'Pol said calmly.

"Well I'll be...small world." Trip declared, clearly flabbergasted by the coincidence.

"We have found one of the collaborators responsible for disrupting the planetary information network, care to join us for the grab?" There was a predatory glint in Suvak's eyes.

"You'd have to take that up with my commanding officer." Trip didn't hide his irritation when mentioning the captain.

"I have remarkable latitude to co-opt personnel given my current position."

"My sa-telsu is scheduled to begin a three day liberty pass in two hours, I do not believe sufficient time exists for him to perform the operations." T'Pol declared in a Vulcan-marking-her-territory tone.

Suvak nodded, he understood that T'Pol would not want her mate in any further danger in the immediate future. It was logical that she did not desire to test the law of averages any further in as far as he was concerned and while the operation had a low likelihood of danger, it was probably best that Tucker be allowed some time to recuperate physically and mentally.

"Well if you really need an over-trained engineer..."

Suvak lifted a hand, "I was just wondering if you would be interested in a little action. I have six of my best men going with me. However, if you get an opportunity once the liberty pass has expired, I would find it agreeable if you were to sit in on some of the interrogations, you may be able to provide additional insight as you were responsible with bringing the system down."

"I'd be happy to, but you'll probably still need to let Enterprise know so they won't think I've gone AWOL or somethin'."

"I look forward to it," Suvak approached and extended a hand, which Trip took and shook it firmly, "It was most agreeable seeing you again, commander, and congratulations."

"Thanks, it was great seein' you too. And about the medals...I really could give a damn about 'em."

"I was referring to marrying the most beautiful daughter Vulcan has produced in centuries." Trip could almost swear Suvak was grinning, "You have an excellent mate, T'Pol, cherish him."

"I do."

Suvak turned and walked away, calling back over his shoulder, "If you get bored, I am not hard to find, commander. We can find some sort of trouble to get in, I am certain of that."

"You be careful out there, understand?" Trip called back.

Trip looked back at T'Pol, something in her eyes igniting a little fire in him. A small smoldering want that caught on the emotional tinder behind his barriers and in seconds he could feel the first inkling of sexual need stirring in his body. T'Pol sensed it and let it roll through her, a strange and delightful heat in her arms and legs, a little ache in her shoulders and a tingling in her toes. His eyes were locked to hers, not taking in or noticing anything but the depth of them, the color, the engulfing sensation of oneness without touching or being touched. Somewhere in the jumble of human and Vulcan passions they had found a unique state of being, a little world where there only existed Charles Tucker III and T'Pol. A place where nothing could touch them, separate them, or harm them. It was perfect insularity where no fear existed, nothing and everything was shared. A wordless simpatico and contentment that neither fully understood and was beautiful to the point of eliciting despair since they could not remain in it indefinitely, but while there, nothing else could bend or break them. It could all come crumbling down now, the stars could burn out or explode, the ground could turn to ice or fire, all the buildings and devices and creations that man and Vulcan and Romulan and whoever else had ever built or conceived to build could topple and it would not matter because in this moment of oneness they would be immortal and unending.

"I love you T'Pol."

"I-"

"T'Pol, Charles, it is fortunate I have located you-"

Trip looked up at the same moment T'Pol turned to see T'Les standing before them, freezing the moment she realized that she had just interrupted something special between them. As a Syrranite she realized it was the perfect synthesis of the Surakian ideal of marriage, at that moment they were as much one as they were separate.

T'Les lowered her head, "Please forgive my intrusion."

"What is it, mother?" T'Pol tried not to sound flustered.

"Your foremother wishes to see you and to meet your mate."

"Your...grandmother, right?" Trip arched his brows.

"Yes, my mother's mother." T'Pol answered her mate.

"Should I run back up to Enterprise'n change?"

"I believe your present attire is very distinguished, Charles. A reminder of your position and status may prove to have additional benefits." T'Les replied.

"My mother's assessment is logical." T'Pol further reinforced.

"Alright then, let's go."

* * *

><p>T'Pol ran her fingers across the fabric of his shirt, the sensation of the material reminding her of the shirt he wore the evening they spent in Savannah. At some point his barriers had shattered, or rather been ripped down by his own doing, and what came forth was the mulled emotions of days, weeks, years of holding feelings in reserve, cataloguing and hiding them away from the world around him. It had not been a crippling experience, rather something more like a soft despair washing over T'Pol that was somehow strangely cleansing. Her grandmother's approval had been unequivocal, a fact that brought her great relief, she had always expected that the tension between her mother and foremother had been the result of them being so much alike in so many ways. However they both seemed to approve of Charles, and even as the sea of repressed emotions of regret, guilt, fear, and anger that had been watered down by days of suppression and years of experience with those feelings washed around her as they poured from her husband's mind she felt and intense need to be with him, to have him, to let him inside of her. Her desire, the sad passion became very evident as her eyes widened and her skin flushed. It had been harder than she had believed possible to contain herself in front of her relatives and when they had finally been beamed up to <em>Enterprise<em> they both had made their way to their quarters quickly.

His own desire was much more keenly hidden, he had remained composed in front of her relatives, showing a dignity that was as pronounced as it was out of character for him. She could feel the mental tones of it in spite of his composure, but now the physical nature of it was evident as a tightness in the front of his trousers even as his hands calmly played across her gowned body. His lips remained chastely aloof from hers, but his eyes were fixed so firmly on hers that they were making love in their own way. Pressed against him she began unfastening the buttons in a slow and deliberate process. Not a word was spoken as she affectionately tended to undressing him with a lethargic ennui that was in complete contradiction to what was occurring in their minds.

* * *

><p>Archer paced his ready room under the critical glare of Erika Hernandez. She had no compunction about letting her distress over his treatment of Commander Tucker and T'Pol. The strangely palpable tension seemed to disquiet them both equally, her persistent affection for Jonathan Archer made the moments when he behaved like this the hardest for her to grasp or reconcile. What she failed to grasp more than anything was why he was taking the revelation of their relationship so personally. She understood there were issues involving regulations, the extent to which Tucker had disregarded the section 15 stipulations and the precedent he had set. But it was a precedent that <em>needed<em> to be set. What better way for two cultures to come closer than when two children of those cultures fell in love with one another. The fact she had missed it herself during the time in the expanse and the months there-after had just meant that Tucker and T'Pol were remarkably disciplined when it came to hiding the truth of it from others. When Archer had implied that this would damage his career and hers as well, Erika almost became livid. In her mind two beings that were truly in love with one another were more important than her career or that of anyone else on _Enterprise_. True love was a rare enough thing, something that couldn't be quantified or measured, it was an unexplainable mystery that made the universe somehow more special and wondrous than any measurable phenomena no matter how rare or amazing.

"Please, stop looking at me like that." He finally said.

"How am I supposed to look at you?" She snapped back.

"What they did...what he did...it doesn't bother you?"

"It only bothers me that they had to keep it secret this long. It bothers me that they couldn't love each other like they wanted too."

Archer stared at Hernandez incredulously, "This is a warship!"

"So? Have they ever once shirked their duty? Do you think if we had what they had we wouldn't have wanted the same thing?"

"_We_ obeyed regulations!"

"And look what that got us." She fired back without so much as a moment's pause.

"Damnit..."

She knew this duel, she had watched it play out so many times. The part of Jonathan Archer that was a compassionate human being was again locked in combat with the part of him that was the devoted career naval officer. He was never rigid, knowing when and how to break the rules or bend them to achieve the ends, he was only dogmatic in as much as he believed that most rules were right most of the time and common sense and good regulations allowed for flexibility when it served a desirable end. What she couldn't understand was his anger and bitterness over this whole thing. What had been the source of these feelings of betrayal? She was as likely to find that out as she was likely to convince him to turn his back on MCS and live a normal life, she still held hope that maybe one day they could have that life together. They would never have children, never watch them grow up and eventually know the joy of watching their line spread and multiply, but at least they could maybe spend quiet twilight years together in the mutual comfort their presence would give each other.

He dropped into his chair, head coming to rest in his hands as he let out a long, tired, despairing sigh. "Why couldn't they have told me? Why couldn't they have made me understand?"

"Because you can't understand it Jon. They're taking a different path from the one you took...that we took."

"Misery loves company, huh?"

"Have you been miserable all these years?" She asked softly.

"I don't know anymore, I guess it was always like I could see this goal, a white tower...and one day I'd stand atop it with the uniform and the adulation and everyone would know I'd done my part, that I'd made a difference, and then I could just slip away from it because I'd be done."

"And now you won't see the white tower?"

"No, that's the problem...I have...Trip and T'Pol, they're each other's white towers. They found it Erika, they found it and they have it and I'm just so angry, so jealous, I can't stand it."

"Jon, you can walk away. You can tender your resignation, if you want me too I'll do the same thing. I don't know, maybe we're not even meant to be together anymore, but if it would make you happy..." She hated to think that he imagined a future without her as part of it, but she could accept it if that was how it had to be.

"I can't, not now, not with everything that has happened. I just can't help but feel like I'm not supposed to be done yet. Like there is something else I'm supposed to do." He allowed a weak smile, "Besides, you always said you wanted to outrank me, and I'm not going to make that easy on you, I wouldn't be able to live down you bossing me around when..."

Hernandez just smiled, she knew what he meant. Somewhere he still held out hope for them being together and that was enough, nothing more needed to be said on the matter. Maybe she could convince him to ease up a bit on Trip and T'Pol in the mean time, she wasn't totally privy to what exactly was going on in regards to them at the moment, but she knew from his body language that he was torn about what he was doing to them.

"So how exactly was giving them a three day liberty pass a punishment?" She broached the subject cautiously.

"I'm putting them on separate shifts, they're not going to be able to have much time together from here-on."

"Ouch."

"They should be down at Vulcana Regar now, I'm hoping that it'll be enough to keep them warm until this sortie coming up is over. After that, T'Pol is being transferred off Enterprise, and I imagine Trip is going to follow her." Archer sighed.

"Why Vulcana Regar?"

"Word is they have the most 'romantic' resorts you can find on Vulcan." Jon shrugged, "guess that'll work in lieu of a normal honeymoon, seeing as how their last liberty got cut short."

Archer rose and paced the room a few more times, "I told them to notify me when they'd finished beaming the two of them down."

Erika shrugged, "Maybe they're still on the ship."

Archer crossed to his desk and pressed the comm key, "Archer to Reed."

"Reed here, sir." the modulated British voice replied.

"Are commander Tucker and Sub-commander T'Pol still on the ship?"

"One moment sir, checking now." There was a pronounced pause, longer than would be necessary to verify whether or not they were on the ship and where they were.

"Mister Reed?"

"Uhhh...sir...it would appear that they...uhhh...are still on the ship."

Archer cut a quizzical look at Hernandez, "Could you comm them and tell them that they are awaited at transporter pad two."

"I'm...I'm not sure that would be the best idea at the moment...sir."

"Care to explain that, mister Reed?" Archer smirked slighly.

"One moment, sir."

The screen on his office console flicked to life showing infrared sensor readings. Archer lowered his head, bringing his hand up and resting his forehead in his palm. Something about his reaction seemed distraught, even mortified. Erika immediately found herself wondering the worst. Thoughts of Romeo and Juliet, a double love suicide. Everything she had heard was that Tucker had not been himself since getting back from Camp Kelly. She had seen it written on his face during the award presentation. With the forces seeking to pull them apart; war, bureaucracy, differing cultures, maybe they had decided it was better to die in one another's arms than to go on in a world that would seek to rip them apart. She rose from her seat and crossed to around behind the desk, hoping not to see what was already playing out in her mind. What she was met with was the thermal image of two bodies, entwined and slowly moving, the slightly cooler petite body laying with arms and legs wrapped around the larger warmer body of what could only have been Trip Tucker. Jon kept his eyes averted, but made no attempt to shut off the feed as the two thermographic forms gently and slowly moved against one another. Erika cut the feed with a sternly extended index finger.

"Maybe we should just let them be for an hour or two." She declared with a teasing lilt.

"Yeah...probably should make sure Malcolm purges the sensor logs too." Jonathan Archer still hadn't lifted his head. "I can't believe I saw that..."


	24. Chapter 24

"Well what do you think we should do about it then?" Admiral Black didn't make the first attempt at composure. He had a justifiable reputation for being fiery, even abrasive. It was widely known that his tolerance for fools was a good deal lower than all the other admirals, but he was, at least, fair in his application. Gardner was often considered an intractable ass by subordinates while Black enjoyed a reputation being the guy "not to screw with." It was no secret that many who didn't know him better categorized him as a pompous ass, and Black did nothing to try to dispel the perceptions.

"Jonathan Archer made it fairly clear he didn't want them serving together on his ship." Gardner replied as calmly as was possible for him.

"To hell with Archer, what are _we_ going to do about it? You seriously think this isn't indicative of something bigger? We pin seven medals on the man's chest two days after his captain demands we split them up and now he wants to resign his commission. This isn't a plate falling over gentlemen, this is an earthquake. What the hell do you think is going to happen when the media asks why Commander Charles Anthony Tucker the third decided to leave MCS?"

Forrest spread his hands helplessly, "He did violate section fifteen article eleven."

"Section fifteen is bullshit." Lieutenant General Carlyle R. Johnson rumbled, arms folded across his chest.

"Exactly." Black affirmed, "Section fifteen was meant to protect developing species from being taken in by perceived godhood of MCS personnel and to protect extant species from cultural contamination. We've been working with the Vulcans for a hundred and five years now, if there has been one tradition in the navy that has gone on longer than to go out, meet exciting new cultures and shoot them its meet exciting new cultures and sleep with them."

The last bit elicited chuckles from around the table. Black had a point, Vulcan Cultural Studies had been a staple in primary school for twenty four years now, several universities had entire lines of study devoted to Surak. Vulcans, on the other hand, tended to find and then magnify every failing in human history, a practice which humans at least grudgingly accepted if not fully embraced. The down side of affluence, power, was the need of the idle classes to engage in ever newer and grandiose methods of public self effacement. This was the same class that called for the abolishment of MCS, following some faulty reasoning that without a method for enforcing their hegemonic sphere, foreign interests, and security other races would simply ignore humanity and allow them to peacefully coexist as part of some big happy family. Without even realizing it they were, perhaps, more human chauvinistic than any of the Xenophobes or those supporting violent expansion. They believed that humans were somehow so singularly special that by dint of their existence they could bring all the races together in one big happy family without concerns of territorial security, expansion, material needs, or plain ordinary, old fashioned, greed and aggression.

The recent conflict with the Romulans had just helped to amplify their cries; "end MCS, no more MCS, peace in space," and another long litany of utterly inane catechisms that just helped to typify how woefully ignorant they were. The High Command had made it abundantly clear that the attack on Vulcan was the result of a feud between two sets of Vulcan peoples nearly two thousand years old, the presence of MAC-V had not served to incite Romulan aggression, rather it seemed to have been the only thing that blunted it. And now there were definitive signs of cooperation; Andoria and Vulcan working side by side, Tellar and Rigel creating trade compacts with the Andorians and Vulcans. Everyone sitting at the same table and, more or less, agreeing on what had to be done and how. And the glue in the middle sticking it all together, the destroyers that warded the trade corridors, the infantry that was pounding aggressors into submission, the cruisers that scourged the boarders of any foe that reared its head was not a kind all-embracing apologist humanity that sought to shame itself for its abilities, it was MCS as an effective extension of the will of the UNE, the armored fist of mankind.

"We could always use him on the dark water project." Gardner offered.

"Who the hell came up with that name anyway?" Forrest inquired with barely contained indignity.

"Ever since the forty seven war all R and D projects go through SID section four for coding, counter-intelligence oversight, and naming. The idea is that if you significantly misdirect any foreign espionage assets then eventually they won't trust any intel they manage to gather." Johnson commented, shrugging. It sounded like a load of crap to him when it was explained to him when he demanded to know why the project set to design and improved load bearing system was called Liver Milk.

"What is dark water?" Black inquired, not being privy to most of the initial stages of research and development projects.

"We're getting good performance out of the CGs, but honestly we need a heavy cruiser or battleship, something that is terrifying enough to represent a significant strategic threat to a given theatre. We've been using the De Güello to tie up a twenty five light year stretch of the Klingon border, but ever six months we're having to sortie more destroyers and frigates to the task group. Problem is that now we've got enough ships attached to the battle group that we're going to have to give A.G. Robinson admiral stars so he can have the necessary authority." Gardner began, "With a full fledged battle cruiser and this new warp eight breakthrough, we could send one ship and a five escort flotilla out to cover an area of seventy five light years."

Black nodded, he'd heard all these ideas before, "We've already had this in the planning stages for years, the Constitution class, its a pipe dream, we can't produce a ship that big that won't be a one-off."

"This is a different project, Constitution was supposed to be a jack of all trades, like the CGX and CG series, dark water is going to be production expedient battleships. Thing is, about twenty eight percent of all the major overhauls currently being done on the CGs as part of the current retrofit program, came out of Tucker's head. He was responsible for fifty four percent of the previous innovations from the first overhaul program and seventy one percent of the retrofit protocols for the productions of the CGs. Hell, before they even reached Vulcan he'd come up with about five or six more excluding the warp eight breakthrough. Its just the way he works, his engineering department is as much a think tank as a performance shop. He gets results and everything and everyone he touches ends up coming out better than it went in." Gardner expounded enthusiastically.

Black looked around the table, "Then why are we just contemplating this? Can we grab him now, get him off Enterprise and back here before the sortie?"

"Tucker wouldn't want to just walk away until he knew everything was in line, he may not be to happy with us or his captain right now, but he'd never leave the crew of _his_ boat out to dry." Forrest commented wryly.

"Who is his number two?"

Gardner lifted a PADD and pulled up a duty roster, "Lieutenant Commander Kelby, Gregory R. Solid performance appraisals, hand picked for Enterprise, good scores at the academy, three duty commendations, and apparently he's been doing a little theory work himself, just got a report sent in a day ago from Kelby with Tucker's recommendation on it."

"Alright, he has confidence in his number two, but that doesn't mean he's read to pass the baton just yet." Black countered.

"I know a bit about Tucker, he was offered a post in R and D in forty five but turned it down because he wouldn't get to see space, what makes you think he'd opt to be a think-tank desk jockey now?" Forrest added as a rebuttal.

"Having a kid on the way can do a lot to change a man's point of view." Gardner answered.

"One thing at a time, first we've got to figure out if we can make this project fly, do we have the resources? If we can complete one, how many more can we complete? What is our time-table, and more importantly...who the hell'll be taking the thing out when its done?" Black once again managed to put a damper on the initial enthusiasm.

"Tucker." Johnson replied succinctly.

"Oh come on! Tucker is a glorified grease monkey, what does he know about command?" Admiral Sanderson had been quiet until then but made his presence adequately known with his protest.

"Tucker may be an engineer but he's also a war fighter, elite, best of the best, I'd give him a special forces battalion commission in a minute if I thought I could get him away from you swabbies. Multiple commendations for valor during the forty seven war, no fewer than four combat drops, more awards for distinguished service during the Xindi campaign, and I don't think I need to remind you gentlemen of what he did on Vulcan." The General replied evenly.

"Are we in agreement then?" Black asked, arms folded across his chest to match his scowl. Black's veto privilege had been a rarely used sword of Damocles he utilized to get his way on the few occasions he decided to press a matter.

Forrest glanced around the table, "Archer is going to be pissed, but there are no objections."

"Very well, I'll contact him directly." Black affirmed, "And now to the next order of business..."

* * *

><p>T'Pol watched quietly as Trip leaned back against the wall of her mother's back garden, he was dirty and covered in sweat but he had succeeded in his task using nothing but primitive agricultural tools. A shovel and axe, both far older than he was, were the only implements he had used, and he was suitable exhausted from the ordeal. The old pel-tar'uk that had been in the rear courtyard since as long as T'Pol could remember had finally succumbed to the almost mercurial temperament her mother had towards it and had been pulled out of the ground. T'Pol speculated that it had been dead for at least a decade, possibly two, but the plant had apparently enjoyed a high degree of prosperity prior to its demise as evidenced by its root system which had grown incredibly deep and spread several meters in every direction. The base bulb of the plant was only slightly smaller than her torso and had become incredibly hard as the result of age and petrifaction after her mother had written it off as dead and left it the Vulcan heat.<p>

Her mother had commented, off-handedly, that she planned to remove it now that she was thoroughly convinced it was indeed dead and not pulling one of its multi-year long low activity cycles that it had in the past. T'Pol had sensed through the bond that Trip suspected that T'Les was indirectly asking or, rather, ordering him to take care of it as it seemed he ended up fixing something every time he had visited the home. She expected some measure of resentment from her mate but instead only perceived calm acceptance and even a little excitement about getting to do "yard work". When she inquired about his enthusiasm out of ear-shot of her mother, Trip had informed her that it was a sign of acceptance on T'Les' part. So as he leaned against the wall, his bare upper body painted with dirt and slick sweat, she just looked onwards appreciating the movement of muscle as he sucked in great greedy breaths of air.

"Do you feel sufficiently accepted?"

Trip looked up and grinned weakly, "It wasn't somethin' you ask a stranger to do, the fact she wanted me to do it means she doesn't think of me as an outsider. I guess its a human thing."

"My mother is Vulcan, Trip." T'Pol admonished softly.

"Moms are moms, I don't think it matter much the culture, I also think she understands humans a lot better than you give her credit for, darlin'."

"That possibility exists."

"So when this thing was alive, it had fruit on it, but it was covered with toxic thorns...ain't a thing easy about this planet, is there?" Trip muttered as he looked over at the mass of dead plant.

"The weather is consistent." T'Pol offered, already knowing the amusement it would cause him. She was rewarded with a hearty laugh and found herself pleased by it. The chuckles continued for a while coming and going. Strangely she could not sense any further mirth from him, yet he continued to laugh occasionally, the sound somehow hollow and dead, his thoughts a jumble of emotions that merged into a singly unrecognizable amalgam.

As unfathomable as these blur of emotions was, she knew their cause; everything Archer said, every perception Trip had regarding the confrontation had bled through to her while they made love in their quarters before beaming down. In the first part of the burst of post-coital energy Trip had typed and sent his letter of resignation to MCS. He understood that MCS would desire his services until at least the end of the scheduled sortie and upon returning for re-supply they would likely require his services in formulating a new engineering TO&E before his EAS would be processed and his release completed. He had not uttered a word about it, had resisted her questioning but she knew, he was willing to throw away his career rather than be separated from her. It was impulsive, illogical, and, strangely, exactly what a Vulcan would have done in the same situation. A refusal to be separated from one's mate until a bond had reached its maturity was part of the reason for the customary year spent together. In theory they had already had four months together but in practice they could count the time spent together in isolation where they could focus solely on one another in days.

"You do not have to do this for me." T'Pol said softly, understanding the extent of his conflict or, perhaps, not so much understanding as grasping.

"I didn't I pulled it out because your momma didn't want it there anymore." His voice caught with emotion, trying to deny what he had done, trying to keep it spirited away into some place where only he could deal with it.

"I am not referring to the pel-tar'uk. Your commission, you do not have to resign on my account."

Her mate stood, drawing to his full height and forcing her to look up at him, "I'm not just doin' it for you. I-" He jabbed a thumb into his chest, "wanna be with my wife, I wanna be with my baby, I wanna have more kids and grow old and have grandkids and not have to worry that some damn fool's gonna pick another fight," He turned away, staring off over the wall at the horizon, hands balling into fists, "Pick another fight and get me sent down to another world where I'll have to watch men die right and left. I don't wanna kill anymore, I don't wanna have to write letters to anymore grievin' moms and dads and wives because I got their boy or husband or whatever killed on account'a the fact it was the only way to achieve the mission."

"K'diwa..."

"I don't think I have it in me anymore. When I thought I wanted to go see the stars, I never thought I'd have this much blood on my hands. I thought I'd just stay on a starship, runnin' the engineerin' section, takin' us where we needed to go. I never thought I'd have had to kill this much, T'Pol, and I don't want any more of it."

"The beings you have killed were only the ones that you took direct action against. For any given individual there is a chance of survival regardless of the danger of an order, in the case of your orders you saved many more lives by giving them than were sacrificed for their completion. You are not a killer, Trip." It was finally in the open, he was finally talking about it and she felt a sense of relief; not just that he had opened up but also that the "mental breakdown" was turning out to be tempered and sedate by human standards.

"There's more to it than that."

"How so? Do you enjoy the act of killing?"

"No!"

"Then I fail to see where the problem lies." She countered flatly.

"The problem is...I'm good at it. I'm about as good at it as I am at makin' sure a warp core is runnin' at peak efficiency. In terms of reaction, I'm as comfortable with a rifle or sidearm or knife in my hand as I am with a hyperspanner."

"K'diwa, heightened aggression response is in your genetic makeup, it is part of who you are. Surely you must comprehend that."

"And that doesn't bother you?" His agitation was clear, almost as if he wanted her to accuse and recriminate against him.

"Were is possible to change who you were or any component pertaining there-to, I would still have no desire to do so. I am mated to who you are, not who you could be." She once again answered evenly, feeling a strange twinge of affection, the implication of what he was saying was that he wanted to be a better man, as much for her as for himself.

He turned back again, his face mildly disbelieving in an almost sadly amused sort of way, "Not a thing?"

"No, not a thing."

He let another weak smile touch his lips, "You're too good to me."

"No, I am not, it is simply the fact that I-"

"I see you have done an admirable job of removing the pel-tar'uk, it was much larger than I had estimated." T'Les commented, seemingly oblivious to her interruption.

T'Pol wheeled around and speared her mother with a glare, once again her declaration had been interrupted, and once again she knew it would be hard for her to make such casually. She wanted to say the words so badly now it was almost a gnawing ache, but without the context of the correct situation, she knew she would be unable to do so.

"There were several calls for you that arrived while you were working on extracting the bush." T'Les declared evenly, ignoring her daughter's indignation.

"For me?" Trip was shocked, "How did anyone know I was here."

T'Les took a moment to assess his physique, understanding the appeal it carried for her daughter even as it caused little more than appreciation of its form and function. He was very strongly built with clearly defined musculature. She found that it reminded her of her deceased mate who had been atypically well built for a Vulcan possessing the broad shoulders, wide chest, and visible signs of physical strength and prowess her daughter's mate exhibited.

"I believe they attempted to reach you on Enterprise." T'Les offered.

"Did they say what they wanted or why they called?" Trip asked, suddenly feeling immodest and stepping part way behind T'Pol in a feeble attempt to cover his form. His state of partial undress would likely be inappropriate to a Vulcan, and he felt a sudden wave of shamed embarrassment.

"Notably an Admiral Black contacted you wishing to review your EAS status, also Koss wished to speak with you." If T'Les knew that EAS stood for Expiration of Active Service she gave no indication.

"Koss?" T'Pol's voice made it clear she was doing nothing to suppress her discomfort at the idea of her former betrothed having anything to do with her mate and, by proxy, herself.

"Yes, he expressed a desire to inquire after Charles' professional opinion." T'Les commented plainly, overlooking the potential for chagrin in the situation. "He will be arriving in approximately one and one quarter hours to discuss the matter."

"I 'spose I better grab a shower then, having you ladies see me like this is bad enough."

The elder Vulcan nodded and as prompted Tucker entered the house to attend to his libations. T'Pol watched him leave, and once she was satisfied he was out of eye and ear-shot she turned back to spear her mother with a glare. "Why did you invite Koss here?"

"He wished to speak with Charles regarding a professional matter." T'Les replied, inured to her daughter's outrage.

"I do not find it acceptable for him to come here." T'Pol snapped.

"Were this your residence your mandate would be heeded, this is not, however, your residence, T'Pol, it is mine, and I am within my rights to extend an invitation to whom so ever I deign fit." The elder countered archly, reminding her daughter of her place in the immediate pecking order.

"He would have killed Trip, how can you view his presence acceptable?"

"What transpired at the kal-if-fee is no longer of consequence, your mate won and because he exhibits the human trait of mercy, permitted Koss to be spared. Koss realizes the gravity of this, and as such is agreeably disposed towards Charles."

"Mother, do you fail to grasp the ramification of this? Charles will not be comfortable facing his former opponent to his position as my mate, humans are naturally inclined to be increasingly aggressive in areas of sexual competition." T'Pol protested, shocked that her mother couldn't comprehend the dynamic.

"Do humans challenge each other to duels to the death for the privilege of mating with a certain candidate?"

"Not as such, and not for many centuries." T'Pol replied, failing to grasp the immediate meaning of the question.

"Then, perhaps, they are more sophisticated and mature in that regard than we are." T'Les rebutted, and then continued after a moment, scolding her offspring, "I believe you should place more trust in your mate's capacity to restrain his emotions and behave in a manner dictated by propriety, to attempt to spare him any situation that would cause him discomfort is to insult his maturity and capacity for control, daughter."

T'Pol was flustered, there was not just her mate to consider, "I am not comfortable with seeing him."

"Then you do not have to enter the room." T'Les fired back immediately.

"I cannot dissuade you."

"No, you cannot, Charles would be disinclined to fail to live up to an obligation either made by himself or on his behalf. I would advise you to better learn the character of your mate, T'Pol, you do him a disservice by failing to grasp who he truly is and how important his sense of honor is to him. It is a very agreeable human trait."

"Yes, mother."

"I have come to know and understand your mate better, T'Pol, and you did indeed make a fortuitous choice even if I was not inclined to believe so in the beginning. He exhibits many of the traits most admirable in humans. It will become increasingly necessary to understand these traits not just for his sake but also for that of your children."

"Children?"

"You do not honestly believe that the two of you will refrain from having additional children, do you?" T'Les arched an amused brow. "You engaged in sexual relations with him before arriving here today."

T'Pol flushed, shocked and surprised, "I cannot see how that is any of your concern." The Vulcan female dynamic becoming suddenly very evident in the almost prudish defensiveness regarding the nature of the physical component with her mate. It was not a logical response in its own right, rather it was instinctive.

"Based on that it is logical to conclude you will produce multiple offspring with your mate. I do not view it as a disagreeable outcome, but it will necessitate you gain a better understanding of the human condition."

"I have spent years among humans." T'Pol interjected.

"You may understand them as a group, but it will be of paramount importance that you understand them as individuals." T'Les replied softly.

T'Pol fell silent, her mother was, again and as always it seemed, correct in this regard. What she found galling was the fact that T'Les, for having such limited contact with humans, seemed to understand or, rather, accept the dynamics of their personalities and natures better than T'Pol could. Perhaps that was the discriminating factor, objectivity. T'Pol had seen humans at their most illogical, most recalcitrant, most intractable and had come to expect it, even as such she mentally catalogued each occurrence and used it to further her belief that they were chronically illogical except when acting at an almost instinctive level.

"You should meditate on this, I will make preparations for Koss' arrival." T'Les commented, seeking to allow her daughter time to reflect.

"I must head into Shi'kahr to acquire certain items for the evening meal." T'Pol countered evenly, prompting an elevated brow from her mother. "While Trip is not adverse to the consumption of Vulcan food, I am sure it would be preferable to him to ingest human food."

"There are establishments that recreate human fare from which we may order a meal."

T'Pol felt sudden reticence at mentioning it, but realized she must do so, "Trip has not properly attended to his diet particularly in regard to his protein intake. It will be necessary to acquire a source of animal protein."

"We can synthesize protein sources to attend to that requirement." T'Les countered, her expression showing obvious distaste at the concept of having meat within her house.

"It does not provide for the nutritional requirements of humans. Humans are obligate omnivores, while the nutritional properties of animal proteins can be duplicated through the use of fortified foods and supplements, they are most keenly adapted to acquiring such nutrients from the most natural source. It is logical." T'Pol answered, hands clamped behind her back. "Was it not father who had a great appreciation of mollusks?"

"An appreciation he tempered. The consumption of flesh has been all but abolished in this province for over six hundred years."

"What if it was also necessary that I consume animal protein for the health of my offspring?"

T'Les blanched, "You have been eating flesh, T'Pol?"

"As a supplement to my diet during the pregnancy, it is in the best interest of the child who is half human."

T'Les took a deep breath, "Further comment on this regard would be illogical as you would be able to turn my own rhetoric from earlier against me. Very well, though I do request you acquire no more than the minimum necessary, I find the idea of having animal flesh in my house...alarming. But I can accept the logic behind it."

"It did not concern you with Kol'ves." T'Pol arched a brow, playing the trump deliberately.

"Your sehlat could not have survived on a diet of flora. Your mate and child...can." T'Les countered.

"But it is not in the interests of their health to do so."

T'Les almost frowned at this, T'Pol was, of course, correct in this regard. For all the ethical discomfort it might cause her, it was of secondary importance to the health of her son-in-law and grandchild-to-be. "I will yield the point in that regard, it would, most likely, be better for their health to maintain aspects of the human diet."

"Very well, mother, I will leave directly."

* * *

><p>Trip emerged from what was, perhaps, a too short shower in the cramped sonic booth feeling clean, but somehow incomplete. Not having to towel off afterwards, not hearing the water going down a drain was strange, almost disconcerting and his mind was having a hard time reconciling the fact he felt clean while still dry. It was a rational, judicious use of technology, eliminating water waste and most likely resulting in a higher level of cleanliness but there was just something about showering in water that felt more comforting to him. Free of the odor, the dirt, the feeling of grime was refreshing, but it was something he would have to grow accustomed too. His previous experiences with the sonic bathing system had left him similarly bewildered, but he had never been quite as dirty before utilizing it in the past.<p>

A set of clothes had already been laid out, and he half expected to see T'Pol waiting for him. What he found was that their room was devoid of her presence and indeed he couldn't "feel" her proximity. All he could sense from her mind was the subtle buzz of thought, planning, a list of things to do, things to acquire thought patterns that reminded him of how his mind worked when he had to go shopping for something. He resisted the urge to intrude directly into her thought patterns having sensed the muted but seething burn of irritation for the last ten minutes now. He had first noticed it when Koss had been mentioned, and from that moment had grown until it had reached a spike of physical pain, much like a nail being driven into his brain before tapering off to the tingling ache it was now.

He wasted no time dressing, a pair of muted smoky gray slacks and an off-white linen shirt. The three buttons and long length reminded him of a kurta which had a strangely Vulcan sensibility to it. Perhaps the clothing of arid region dwelling peoples were similar by some strange biological imperative. He finished dressing by rolling the sleeves up to his elbows as he exited the room and made his way down the hall to the expansive sitting room. T'Les was already seated, perusing a PADD with a pitcher of water and glasses at the ready. Trip crossed to one of the low couches and sat himself, leaning back against the cushions and allowing his eyes to drift closed a moment.

"T'Pol was uncomfortable with the idea of remaining in the house with Koss visiting, she went to acquire some items for the evening meal." T'Les spoke, causing Trip to open his eyes as she poured a glass of water and set it before him.

"Thank you." He lifted the glass taking a sip, "Would it have been more appropriate for me to have refused to see Koss?"

"It is difficult to say, usually in this sort of paradigm, either you or Koss would be dead. The fact that neither of you are puts an unanticipated twist on the dynamic."

"So there is nothin' in Vulcan etiquette to act as a guide?" Tucker inquired.

"In situations where a male relinquished his claim to a female, it is usually the case that the male is shamed and would not seek to be reminded of the source of the shame." T'Les replied, setting the PADD aside.

"Isn't shame an emotion?"

"Certain aspects of the stigma are logical. An incapacity to unwillingness to defend one's claim to a mate has a number of ramifications. It can imply that the competing male was superior which has obvious genetic overtones. Indifference towards a chosen mate can imply that the female in question is viewed as inferior which, in turn, makes implications about the family in question and the wisdom of the refusing male's parents."

"Has there ever been a situation of more than one female wishin' to be mated to a male?"

"Usually that is handled in a manner other than the koon-ut-kal-if-fee." T'Les answered frankly with a hint of amusement.

"I suppose males of any race are easy, huh?"

"With the proper application of coercion it seems." T'Les replied, brow arched wryly.

"Its probably improper for me to be askin' these kind of questions." Trip grimaced a little, you weren't supposed to discuss this sort of thing with a lady and especially not if she was your mother in law, but he could arrive at no other alternative. T'Pol tended to just brush everything under the rug of their being a mated pair rendering it irrelevant.

"Ignorance of Vulcan customs and practices in this regard is understandable, there is no literature available on such matters as far as I am aware of."

"Is there someone I should talk to, then? I should probably know these sorts of things." Trip rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"I believe the only way you would understand what would be expected of a Vulcan mate would have been to be raised Vulcan, you were not, and therefore cannot be expected to behave as such."

Trip crossed, his arms, leaning back into the sofa and staring down at the low table, his eyes following the pulsating geode pattern of the top. "Its not like I can just rest on bein' a human, among my people marriage is about growin' as a person, becomin' more than the sum of parts."

"Humans are not telepathic." T'Les seemed momentarily confused, seeming as if he was implying there was a measure of telepathy among well mated humans.

"We don't need to be...we believe in this concept called a soul mate. When you find your soul mate you don't need to be able to get in each other's heads. You don't need to say a word, don't need to give any signals, no hints or clues...you just, click with them, everything just fall into place." Trip shrugged, the gnawing curiosity tinged fear that perhaps he and T'Pol were not truly soul mates, that the bond they developed in accordance with the Vulcan way was just a way of cheating the concept. "Unless I can figure out exactly what T'Pol needs of a mate in the Vulcan way, I don't 'spose I'll ever be entirely what she needs."

"Your relationship with T'Pol is the prototype, I know of no other instance where a Vulcan has formed a mate bond with another race. There is nothing you can be told or that can be explained to you that will provide insight. Events will just have to be allowed to unfold and mistakes will have to be learned from." T'Les commented evenly, knowing it left him in a precarious and uncomfortable situation but it was one he would have to accept unless he desired to end the relationship. Something told her that it was not the case.

"I'm probably bein' irrational...but if there is one things humans have always done really well, its fear."

"You should not focus on such things, Charles, you will spoil your mood before your guest arrives." T'Les chided.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You may call me, T'Les, Charles."

Trip grinned, "Force of habit, just how I was raised."

"So there are differing traditions regarding behavior among existing cultural groups on Earth?" T'Les lowered the PADD, interested to learn more.

"Well, in the southern part of the United States particularly there are still some of us who cling to the idea of what it means to be a gentleman or a lady. Showin' proper respect and courtesy to your elders and peers, bein' truthful, behavin' honorably, standin' up for your convictions and bein' just outspoken enough to make your values known without necessarily shovin' 'em in everyone's faces."

"Fascinating."

"It's a hard standard to live up too all the time, sometimes you just end up playin' fast and loose with the rules, but it's good to have somethin' to aspire too." Trip let a small smirk play at the corner of his mouth, "I suppose though, if I'd always been a perfect gentleman T'Pol and I never would have figured out how we felt for each other."

"I am beginning to understand how that would have been unfortunate, indeed."

Trip nodded, perhaps his biggest failing of the antebellum code was the fact he had always been a bit cavalier when it came to women. As far back as he could remember, he had been considered something of a lover boy, stealing a kiss to Beth Coleman's cheek back when most boys his age still considered girls "gross." By the time he was in fourth grade he could count on getting seven to eight times more than his fair share of attention come Valentine's day. By fifteen he had been initiated into the world of sex and while he was never promiscuous per-se, he had enjoyed more encounters than a man of his breeding probably should have. T'Pol, though, was the first and only woman that had ever made him want to settle down and make a life together. No matter who may have come before, she was the only one to hold that distinction which was a fact she would likely never fully grasp.

Nothing more was said for a moment, Trip lost in thought reflecting on the strange vicissitudes of fate that had lead him to T'Pol and her to him. How strange that a series of events could unfold as they did without some overarching design or plan in place. Maybe that was just how the universe worked; ordering the chaos, unexplainable, unforeseeable interactions leading to an eventual synthesis that seemed to logical and expected after the fact but whose origin could never have been predicted.

T'Les lowered the PADD she was perusing, "What do you know about installing lighting?"

Trip couldn't help but grin, "What kind would you like?"

* * *

><p>Shi'kahr would likely take years to fully recover from the brutality inflicted on it by the Romulan invaders and as a consequence by MAC-V's attempt to defend it. Marine artillery and air strikes had probably managed to do more physical damage to the city than anything the Romulans had as part of their arsenal, but there-in lay the irony of warfare; MCS had destroyed the city to save it. Damage could be repaired, cultural artifacts could be restored, the one thing that could never be replaced, the historical and cultural integrity of the city, had been saved. Shi'kahr was now, and forever more a Vulcan city and human blood had paid the price to keep it such. It was a weighty thing to consider, more so because of her mate's role in the victory over the Romulan forces. Nearly a third of the Romulan invasion force had been sent to occupy Shi'kahr, by the time MCS reinforcements had arrived, MAC-V had effectively occupied two thirds of the entire invasion force. Camp Kelly had proved such a threat that the Romulans were willing to throw the majority of their task force at it, Trip had been largely responsible for that as he created a defensive posture that was still aggressive and sought to harass and interdict the enemy where-ever possible.<p>

There had not been a post-invasion languor among the Vulcan people, they had, logically, returned to their routines as best as they could once the Romulan threat was suppressed and even now shops and professional complexes still plied their trades and wares, sometimes from the front of flattened buildings. Already two distinct schools of thought had formed among the populace; one maintained that MCS had preserved their cultural identities and liberties by fighting off the Romulans, the second opinion belonged to a far more vocal minority that maintained that the invading Romulan forces would have been reasonable if not for the interference of Earth. She was, perhaps, biased to be in favor of the former, but even thinking objectively she could not see how the contention of the latter could be viewed as anything but nonsense. If the Romulans had been disposed to negotiation, there would have been not need to bring in what was a truly massive invasion force.

For all the speed with which Shi'kahr, her task was not dependent on it. In point of fact, it had been the Camp Kelly Commissary that she had visited to acquire the ingredients she needed for her and her husband's meal. In spite of the fact that Shi'kahr drew large numbers of alien business people and diplomats and had a sub-economy geared around making them feel at ease on Vulcan, certain aspects of the human diet were exceedingly hard acquire given their peoples' propensity for viewing the consumption of meat as barbaric. The few grocers that did stock it, did so at a premium and were typical V'tosh ka'tur who were all but shunned by Vulcan society at large.

Upon reaching her mother's home and exiting the ground car she was immediately greeted with the sight on another ground vehicle, likely Koss'. She tried to calm herself with a series of deep breaths, reaching outwards tentatively to determine her mate's state of mind, what she sensed was a highly agitated state, energetic and slightly disquieted. It had been foolish to let Koss see him, she could feel his attempts at restraint, felt them failing him. She could almost see what would occur in her mind, the fight that would ensue, Trip would certainly be victorious, perhaps finish what he started at the kal-if-fee. She did not completely eschew the possibility, but if he did so it would be the end of his career, he would be court-martialed, kicked out of MCS in disgrace. She couldn't allow that to happen, or the guilt he would likely feel at killing Koss in a fit of rage. She crossed to the door quickly, bag still in hand. With haste born of necessity she moved through the courtyard and threw the door open, hearing Trip's slightly raised voice coming from the sitting room. She moved quickly, past her mother before the elder woman could say a word and to the large room only to stop dead in her tracks at the sight of a sehlat cub crouched defiantly in the middle of the low table between the matching sofas.

"No! No gettin' on the table!" Trip scolded with an extended index finger.

The creature rutted forward, forelegs bent and hind legs wide for improved purchase as if about to pounce, its tail whipping back and forth and it let out a low mewling growl.

"I believe in construes your admonishment as a form of play." Koss commented evenly, as he arched an amused brow.

"He's a stubborn lil' cuss." Trip shook his head, "Go on, now! Off the table!" He reached in and popped the smilodon on its hind quarters. The recalcitrant creature obeyed with a growl and awkwardly jumped down, his hind legs sending a PADD tumbling from the table as it did, a moment later it jumped up on the sofa before which Trip was standing and after surveying the piece of furniture, settled down. Trip looked to the door with exasperation, "T'Les, is it alright for it to be on the couch?"

Both T'Pol and Koss turned to see the lady of the house drying her hands, her expression showing the usual measure of Vulcan amusement. "As long as it does not become characteristically destructive, I have no objection. This might be a matter for you to consider in the interest of future furniture purchases, Charles."

Koss stood upon catching sight of T'Pol, her hair covered with a U.S.S. Enterprise CGX-01 ball cap of the type issued to the crew. He lowered his head in a nodding bow, "T'Pol, it is agreeable to see you. Your sa-telsu and I have been discussing design issues."

T'Pol made little attempt at propriety. "Is the sehlat yours?"

"It is a freshly weaned cub, when I learned of your pregnancy I thought it would be appropriate to ensure your and Commander Tucker's first born should have a suitable pet."

T'Pol blinked, her expression frozen into an unreadable mask of what could be contempt, irritation, confusion, or surprise as rendered by the Vulcan face. "I see. There are issues to which I must attend, if you will excuse me."

Koss nodded, remaining composed despite the behavior directed at him, "Of course."

Trip looked at T'Pol with some concern, it wasn't his place to say anything, or so he believed, but she was being rude and he found it out of character. He didn't try to hide his feelings about the situation, letting them into their mental link where she would know his concern about her behavior. It was clear she picked up on it immediately, turning to make eye contact, something almost apologetic in the way she looked at him.

"I shall prepare our dinner, K'diwa."

"Alright, darlin'."

T'Pol turned from the entry to the sitting room and made her way back to the kitchen to find her mother standing against the counter, a single brow arched at her daughter. T'Pol did not have to study her face for more than a split second to realize it was an expression of disapproval. She was not certain if the genesis of the discontent was rooted in her choice of meal plan or her treatment of Koss but she suspected it was the latter. She resolved herself to say something by way of justification to her mother when a voice from behind startled her.

"Fine thing the women of our family, dishonoring our mates by our behavior."

T'Pol spun to look directly into the face of her maternal fore-mother. She stood with arms crossed, an eyebrow mimicking T'Les' arched upward. There was something uncanny about the family resemblance, she could see both herself and her mother in the face of the much older T'Sar daughter of T'Mir, current matriarch of the clan of Sokel.

"Fore mother..." Was all T'Pol could manage.

"Yes, yes...I still draw breath. Now in regards to this mate of yours, I would like to speak to him." The matriarch said imperiously.

"Charles is currently reviewing one of Koss' designs, mother, it would not be appropriate to interrupt them." T'Les fired back in as snippy a way one could expect of a Vulcan.

"Is it not proper to makes one's respect to a visiting elder?" She retorted.

"Charles is not Vulcan, while his personal code of behavior would require him to do so, it would be no less rude to interrupt." The middle aged Vulcan women shot back at her mother.

"Then I shall simply observe them." She turned towards the sitting room, taking a few steps before halting in her tracks, turning back to look at T'Pol, "Attend to your husband's meal as you said you would." She scolded.

T'Pol turned to look at her mother the concern clear on her face, T'Les responded with a shrugging bounce of her brows and with a barely audible sigh went back to cleaning vegetables for the evening meal. T'Pol was finding it harder to regain composure.

"What if she does not approve of Trip?" T'Pol asked almost breathless with concern.

"Almost undoubtedly she will not approve of him, just as she did not approve of your father and just as your second fore mother did not approve of her mate. It is something of a family tradition, it would seem, for the women of our family to follow our hearts to a mate."

T'Pol was silent for a moment, "I had not realized that father was your choice and not your parents'. What will we do if she does not find Trip agreeable?"

"She will almost undoubtedly find him agreeable, she just will not approve as a matter of course, but I do not believe that will be grounds for concern."

T'Pol took a deep breath, finding some measure of calm, she would have to meditate for longer than usual this evening; the stresses of the day were seriously taxing her control. Perhaps they would have been better of going to the resort in Vulcana Regar, at least there they would have been free of family and Koss. There was, however, no logic in second guessing the decision, and she had a more immediate concern; preparing Trip's dinner, an activity she felt some measure of anticipation about, it would be the first time she had prepared a meal for him and she felt bound to exceed expectations.

For a moment she reflected on the human quality of empathy, the capacity to reflect upon and feel sympathy for the suffering of another, it was then she fully realized how trying the day had to be on Trip. The award ceremony that morning, the confrontation with Archer, and now having to play host to Koss and the scrutiny of her fore-mother...it had to be taxing his own control as much as it was hers. If her fore-mother was to learn of their guv-tvi-rivak and how it had lead to the formation of her bond, she would likely call for a legal annulment immediately, it wouldn't matter to her they had completed the katelau and she was with child. She would fight to the death before she would allow a p'pil'lay to separate them, if that meant killing one of her own blood, there would be no hesitation. In the context of her marriage anyone who attempted to interfere was an enemy, the distinction would apply equally to all, including her own kin.

T'Les seemed to sense her daughter's concern and spoke up softly, "Nothing will ever become between you two that is not of your own making. Do not concern yourself in that regard, T'Pol. Even if she does not approve, she will accept it, and if I am truly her daughter, she will come to see how fortunate your bonding was, as I have, tal-kam."


	25. Chapter 25

It was a rare evening, the winds flowing from the Viltan flats had struck the Womb of Fire, the furnace of heated scree at the foot of the chain and then climbed in a funneled updraft to the high places where the atmosphere was so thin, one could gaze off into space and as the current reached the edge of the troposphere it skirted along the boundary where there was still at least enough atmospheric pressure to maintain it's movement. Often it would stay lost high up at the edges of the atmosphere to eventually lose energy and die, but on this evening the winds coming off the Voroth sea had funneled perfectly along the mountains of Gol before climbing to the heavens between Mount Kolinar and Seleya and forcing the chilled Viltan winds down into the forge to warm just slightly before pouring into Shi'kahr. The scent of rain hung tenuously on the breeze, and if the current continued through the night they would indeed have a light desert rain. Vulcans became instinctive when it rained, an ancient drive, older than pon farr, older the logic, older than the age of war drove them to mate when it rained. Longitudinal studies had seemed to find a link between regional ancestry and the cycle of pon farr; it seemed that certain regions experienced the same cyclical periods of heavy rain at seven year intervals and individuals who could trace direct descent from those regions experienced pon farr in time with the meteorological jubilee.

T'Pol watched her mate intently. He had been quite hungry by the time their dinner was prepared, but in the interest of propriety he ate slowly and a small portion. He had been relatively certain T'Les would at least understand if not agree with consuming meat, but he was positive that T'Sar would not be so open minded. As it was he ate quietly, drawing as little attention to the food as possible, discreetly sequestering the portions of flesh between inoffensive bits of bread of vegetable. T'Pol had at once felt anger and pride; anger that he, the hero of Shi'kahr, the savior of Vulcan had to hide an aspect of his human heritage, the pride was at the grace in which he did so. T'Sar had not, however, been fooled having detected the meat by smell, but she at least had the courtesy to say nothing while spearing her daughter with a reproving glance. Thankfully her mother had chosen to bring it out into the open and transform the issue into a matter of basic biology. T'Les had mimicked T'Pol's words, informing the matriarch that humans were obligate omnivores and three weeks of making war against the Romulans, sleeping little and eating less had left him malnourished. It was also an opportunity for T'Les to invoke a foremother's coup, mentioning that the child T'Pol was carrying required the same dietary considerations as its father thereby excusing the youngest of the clan's women at the table from the stigma.

After the meal T'Pol had retreated with Trip outside into the back courtyard, doubtlessly to give T'Les time to take her mother to task for her sudden and rude invasion of her home. Trip reclined calmly in a chair, looking out over the horizon to the mountains and the slowly creeping darkening of night crossing from left to right across his field of view. He lifted the small glass to his lips, sipping at the amber liquid inside. Eyes closing as the muscles in his jaw bunched, swishing the liquid around the inside of his mouth before swallowing with a ghost of contentment crossing his lips. T'Pol watched with fascination, she found liquor served only one purpose and that was inebriation. Human grain liquors tended to strike her as harsh to a degree to where she could neither adequately reflect upon nor savor the subtler vagaries of its composition. Her mate was clearly the opposite, the intoxication was just an added bonus for him, he genuinely savored the intricacies and nuance in the skilled whiskey makers craft.

"What are you tasting, k'diwa?"

"They used more rye than usual in this blend and sweet corn, helped speed fermentation, but you can pick up on it. There's also kind of buttery almond flavor, and just a hint of berries..." He rolled the glass, breathing its bouquet in as he did, "If I didn't know better I'd say they filtered through hickory, you can almost smell it in the charcoal notes."

"I was not aware that drinking whiskey had such esoteric elements." T'Pol commented, her right brow climbing upwards.

"Don't 'spose it does for the uninitiated."

"Oh?"

"It's mostly a southern thing, darlin'; a real southern man knows his whiskey inside and out, even the Baptists, don't let 'em tell ya otherwise. Now, you take Cap'n Archer, he wouldn't know good whiskey if it walked up and slapped him in the face, alotta folks think the only way to tell for sure is to look at the price...that can burn ya as often as not."

"And this bottle was from?"

"With the compliments of Camp Kelly, so I suspect it's from General Kim's stock..."

A breeze with a hint of the night's first chill played through T'Pol's hair, "What gave you that indication?"

The back courtyard seemed much emptier now that the pel-tar'uk no longer scourged the nine by nine meter walled in patio. Trip decided that having meat with his evening meal was offense enough to his Mother in Law's house that he wouldn't push matters further by consuming alcohol while inside as well. T'Les was initially unconcerned by the prospect, stating that the adults of her family had traditionally consumed Vulcan wine as an evening ritual. Upon the removal of the cork stopper the first hints of the fragrance of the liquor had almost staggered the elder Vulcan at which point Trip had politely excused himself to the patio to enjoy his drink. T'Les had proffered a glass for her daughter to which T'Pol immediately declined explaining that humans could suffer from a condition known as fetal alcohol syndrome for which there was no pre-natal treatment. T'Les had countered that T'Pol was not human, T'Sar replied with an arched brow stating that she was skeptical if the alleged offspring was human either. This had earned her a spearing glare from both T'Pol and T'Les at the joint implications that T'Pol could be lying and/or that she had engaged in cuckolding her mate.

He seemed to be enjoying being outside if he current level of repose was an indicator. He leaned back languidly into the chair, eyes closed, a small smile on his face. T'Pol was unsure why, but she felt a sudden strong affection for him, more pronounced than the subtle and constant want to be with her mate. This was the Vulcan heart, tumultuous and violent under the calm waters of logic, and in spite of the fact she felt a lack of control in this regard, a thing that would normally frighten her, brought her nothing but contentment.

"Darlin' Bill Kim was drinkin' whiskey before I was born. A man doesn't make it as far as he had in this man's military without developing a suitable appreciation for a drop of whiskey...and this is a fine drop'a whiskey."

"It is agreeable seeing you content, k'diwa."

Trip sighed, "Its almost enough to make a man forget...feels almost like bein' home."

T'Pol furrowed her brow, "The bourbon?"

"Its like the war didn't happen here...like everything is normal. Everything is just like is should be; your mom, Koss, the house..." He paused, "And you...you more than anything."

"What did Koss wish to discuss with you?" T'Pol couldn't hold her curiosity in check any longer.

"He's been commissioned to assist with the plans for a starbase. Its mostly living quarters, but he didn't know a thing about buildin' with vacuum tolerances as part of the consideration. So basically I just gave him a primer on what to consider...its easy to design tryin' to keep the outside from gettin' in, but in this case you need to work on trying to keep the inside from gettin' out. Its a different critter entirely."

"So you provided him with useful advice?"

"Of course I did."

"But he is your rival."

"Not anymore." Trip smirked.

"How do you arrive at that conclusion?"

He leaned close, his face inches from hers, "Because you're mine, darlin'."

T'Pol sensed his consideration of whether he should engage in a little tacit codification of his claim, a wave of fiercely territorial desire that hit her suddenly and with colossal force and left her eyes fluttering and breathing noticeably quickened as if caught unprepared by the physical act of passion. The sudden loss of control was further amplified by her own feelings of affection and a passing memory of the love-making after the award ceremony that very morning.

"Should we retire to our room?" She asked almost breathlessly.

"Not before I can speak with him." T'Sar stood as close to imperiously over the couple as her meager height and build would allow.

T'Pol stood suddenly, surprised by the sudden intrusion as her mate rose to render proper respects. She flushed in embarrassment at the obvious desire in her body language moments before. "Fore-mother."

"Ma'am." Trip intoned.

"I will attempt to be brief and you two may return to rutting like Ch'kariya."

"Whatever behavior my sa-telsu and I engage in while in private is none of your concern." T'Pol replied defensively.

"It is if you can be heard." T'Sar fired back.

"The walls are kinda thin, darlin'." Trip replied.

"Are you saying our architecture is insufficient?" The matriarch glared at Tucker challengingly.

"Sandstorms can gust up to one hundred and seven kilometers per hour here. A powerful enough haboob can bring hundreds of pounds of sand and similar abrasives into contact with load bearing structures, walls, roofs, and windows. In that kind of storm cyclonic formations can significantly alter atmospheric pressure. In such an event windows, doors, and even interior walls can be blown outwards by the sudden drop in pressure if not made of strong enough or significantly reinforced materials." Trip's reply was almost mechanical; atmospheric interactions with architecture, just a bizarre subset of his skill set as an engineer. He was, of course, correct, a fact T'Pol felt a strange form of pride in.

"I had not considered such...what would be your suggestion for suitable material?" T'Sar cocked a slightly bewildered brow.

"Reinforced, poured concrete." He fired back without a moment's hesitation.

"Would that not be materially expensive?"

"A flattened house is expensive, solid construction is an investment." He replied, a glint in his eye, knowing he'd won this round.

"That is...logical."

"Horse sense, ma'am. The simplest answer is usually the best. Concrete continues to harden through its life-span, becomin' more solid as time progresses; hurricane proof, flood proof, fire, theft, and Klingon raid proof. Hell, in the right situation they can withstand strategic weapon attacks."

"Romulans?"

T'Pol watched Trip's expression transform, his face seemed to sink, lips drawn into a thin line, eyes losing their sparkle. "Based on what we observed at camp Kelly they don't have the type of ordnance capable of penetrating a well built concrete structure."

"And your people?" T'Sar already knew the answer.

"We do possess ordnance capable of defeating structures up to and includin' hardened military bunkers in both field artillery and air to ground trans-atmospheric aircraft delivered devices." His answer was flat, almost as if he could sense where it was going, what implication was being made. T'Pol was still clueless, wondering what possible purpose her foremother's line of questioning could be pursuing.

"So it would be safe to say your kind is a greater threat to Vulcan than the Romulans ever were."

T'Pol started, the assertion was ludicrous, unthinkable, and from a certain perspective, true. If Humanity decided to annex Vulcan there was very little her people could do to stop them; MCS fielded better technology, faster ships, more firepower, and a ground Marine force that didn't know rival in known space. With the standing expeditionary forces currently arrayed on planet, they could effectively take over the entirety of Vulcan in a matter of days. The warship contingent of the task forces still in orbit could hold off the Vulcan fleet indefinitely. Trip had managed to commandeer control of the planetary information network, it was likely that MCS could use it to take hijack the network if they so desired. It was logical in a strange way, Vulcan had attempted to stymie MCS at numerous junctures just to be bypassed when advancements in human technologies rendered the Vulcan narrative irrelevant. There were those among the humans who did resent being forced to tip toe around her people when technological and evolutionary advantages among the humans would have dictated that the Vulcans be treated more as a client race than vice versa.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, ma'am, but you are partially correct; MCS is definitely the greater threat if you wish to rate humanity and Romulans on terms of military capability." Trip choked the words out quietly.

T'Sar folded her arms into the sleeves of her robes, "Then why do your people not simply conquer Vulcan? You are militaristic and violent."

"Because, ma'am, we believe there is a difference between being assertive and aggressive."

"Intriguing, please explain."

"Just because your have strength doesn't mean you always have to use it, sometimes its best to just let folks know you have it rather than havin' to pound everyone until they get the hint." Trip said quietly, softly, as if somehow ashamed of his own words.

"Why then would an engineer, such as yourself, engage in combat if the ideal is not to use your strength if avoidable?" T'Sar queried.

"Because it was my duty. I was tasked with ensurin' the enemy didn't win."

"I understood it that you were tasked with allowing the High Command to escape, not the defeat of the Romulan forces." The elder Vulcan countered quickly.

"Once I was on planet with no means to return to Enterprise, it became my duty to prevent the enemy from achievin' its aims. At that point my first job was to be a fighter, not an engineer."

"You did adapt quite well as I am led to believe." She arched a brow.

"I'm genetically predisposed to have a heightened aggression response."

"Aggressive?"

"Yes, ma'am...as opposed to assertive. The trick is bein' able to control yourself."

T'Pol could sense he felt like he was being backed into a corner, his mind racing to consider anything and everything he said that could be turned back around on him. He was prepared for this, knowing it was his duty as her husband to present himself as the best mate possible even if that meant highly personal and uncomfortable interrogations.

"Humans exercise control over themselves?" T'Sar arched a brow.

Trip's expression remained solemn, but T'Pol detected a little spark in his eyes, like a flame had rekindled among the dead embers that had been there a moment before. It was mischievous and stalwart at the same time, maybe even defiant. It was sublimely human, encapsulating that which made them distinct, their ability to be passionate about anything and everything they did, but with a strangely staid quality; a quality that made them at once chaotically free and stonily reserved at the same time. "Every damn day."

The barest hint of a Vulcan smirk crossed the matriarch's face as she inclined her head to the side for a moment, as in contemplating the assertion and what it meant. "Intriguing."

* * *

><p>"So you want me to approve a transfer order to send the best practical engineer in MCS off my ship?" Archer almost growled the words, a new spike of anger over the situation occurring between his Science and Engineering senior staff officers shredding what vestiges of acceptance he had managed to develop earlier in the day.<p>

"Jon, you don't have a lot of say in this either way." Forrest intoned calmly but with just enough of a hint of command in his voice. "You may be the best captain we've got right now, but that doesn't mean we _have_ to pander to you about everything."

"Trip Tucker belongs on this ship, he's wasted anywhere else."

"That may be, but we can't separate him from his wife and child." Forrest replied.

"We damn well sure can! We do it every damn day!" Archer snapped. "I have twenty six enlisted and officers on this ship separated from their spouses and kids. Hell, Phlox has three wives and like five kids and he's separated from them!"

"Archer...Tucker sent in an EAS request...he's ready to resign his commission." Forrest let the hammer drop, leaving the captain struck dumb. "He does not want to have a kid with an absentee father and we're not ready to allow a family on a warship regardless of the background of the parents. If sub-commander T'Pol was not pregnant, we were ready to order you to overlook it, but she _is_ pregnant and we're _not_ going to risk a child on a combat cruiser."

"Its flaunting the regulations; it insults my crew and it insults-" He never got to finish.

"This is bigger than regulations, its bigger than the crew, and its bigger than you, Archer!" Forrest almost never raised his voice, it came as a surprise, stunning Archer into silence. "Its a human and a Vulcan...you know what it means? It means a Vulcan chose a human in spite of how illogical and barbaric and whatever else they say about us. It means that we're connected, our people and theirs...if a human and a Vulcan can fall in love with each other, respect each others' traditions." Forrest shook his head a moment, "It means that a federation of planets is doable. They're a goddamn symbol, Archer!"

Archer shut his eyes, mouth drawn into a line, he'd lost. Trip was ready to end his career for the sake of his marriage, ready to walk off Enterprise and likely never look back, and then there was T'Pol. The days, weeks, months he'd spent trying to convince himself there was no attraction, trying to remind himself that his infinite on-again, off-again with Hernandez was the only relationship he could ever take seriously. The way they had come to trust one another despite their differences, the closeness he began to feel in the expanse, the thought that maybe there was something there just to realize now that she chose, _chose_ Trip. She hadn't settled, she didn't see her life with anyone but Tucker...the goofy engineer, always a grin and a joke, always snapping pictures with that damn camera. The least and most serious member of his crew, and T'Pol chose him.

"Should we transfer their belongings over to Columbia for the trip back to earth?" Archer finally asked, voice tight through almost gritted teeth.

"Say what you want about Tucker, he believes in duty...he intends to finish the four month patrol of the Romulan border before transferring back to MCS to help us iron out some technical concerns. The kid probably has PTSD up to the eyeballs about now too, but he wanted to make sure _your_ ship was squared away and held together during the deployment." Forrest replied.

"He said that?" Archer opened his eyes.

"Not in so many words but he did indicate in the EAS request that he would be able to use the time to ensure.." Forrest punched up something on a PADD at his left hand, looking down, "the engineering crew of Enterprise is adequately prepared, trained, and cross trained to support the new chief engineer and operations department."

"Any idea who the replacement will be?" Jonathan asked, voice still constricted by the feeling of tightness in his chest.

"We sort of assumed lieutenant commander Kelby would be filling Tucker's shoes. Impression we got is that Tucker has been grooming him for a department of his own for some time."

Archer shrugged with a sigh, "He's no Trip Tucker, but he's sharp, a good officer. I guess he has worked very hands on with Trip for the last four years too..."

"Jon, I know you want to come down on this guy, you probably already have...but for God-sake think about what he's been through. Ease off just a little, he's a good sailor, he knows what his boundaries are, knows how to do his duty."

"Its hard with him...I thought he was my best friend, then to find out..."

"Jon, this guy is damaged, his psych evals pretty much have him as having PTSD from the forty seven war, then the Xindi attack got his sister, he saw close action several times during that mess, and now with Vulcan...he's gotta be close to breaking."

"The Xindi were bad on all of us." Archer countered. Everyone had suffered as part of Task Force: Saber. It was a fact that nobody in the Task Groups had lost a family member other than Trip, but everyone had seen and experienced the brutality.

"Did you kill anyone with your bare hands, Jon?" Forrest stared into the screen reproachfully.

"No... I thought..." Archer lowered his eyes, it suddenly sinking in, "I thought it was just a rumor..."

"Several of Tucker's people were concerned about him after you got back from the expanse, they brought it up with mental health services. I know they say Tucker is a cut up and everyone's friend, but he's got to be hurting inside, worse now than before." Forrest's face was deathly serious.

The scourge of post traumatic stress had plagued humanity since war stopped being glorified games of maneuver in the mid nineteenth century. The horrors of what happened when war entailed in space brought it that much further home. The level of dehumanization was elevated beyond anything in Earth's history. It was much easier to rationalize killing a member of another species, so different on the outside, unrecognizable languages, unfamiliar appearance, and the mutual willingness to commit violence on those that were not like them. But watching something bleed to death, taking choking last breaths, screaming in fear and agony. Suddenly it was not nearly so alien, nearly so foreign, and the realization that you had killed, murdered, taken a life came home just as strongly as if your foe had been another human. Archer had experienced the benefit of never having to actually push the button himself, never had to be the one that killed the enemy. Malcolm Reed had been able to detach himself from the consequences for a long time until the day that they engaged a Xindi Reptilian scout flotilla and the corpses had smacked into the external cameras, a start reminder that in each of the four ships had previously had twenty two souls on board. It had taken exactly four minutes for Malcolm to snuff out almost ninety lives and he hadn't had to look one of them in the eye while doing it.

"I'll think about it, seriously. They always say its the empty can that rattles the most, with that in mind Trip would never let on if it was getting to him." He paused a moment, remembering something he had learned while acting as the Katric Arc for Surak, "I wonder if he's hiding it from T'Pol too..."

"Pardon?" Forrest looked confused.

"Vulcans are telepathic, in their tradition spouses share a telepathic link they call a bond, for some Vulcans it just barely there, but I sort of got the feeling from T'Pol that she and Trip had a strong bond."

"Keep me informed if there starts to be a problem related to that." Forrest ordered.

"Will do."

"Very well, Forrest out."

Archer sat back in the chair, looking over the walls of the small office off the main bridge and CIC. Framed awards, plaques, and pictures covered the asymmetric walls, accolades and memories, awards and friends. They all made him feel suddenly uncomfortable, ashamed, like they were there to mock a petulant child and remind him of what was proper behavior. His mind went back to Trip obscuring his view of a dead Xindi Reptilian outside engineering. Blood being wiped off his hands, but little being done about where it soaked his sleeves and the chest of his uniform. He remembered the streaks on his face, how he had overlooked them at the time but clearly there had been blood on his face that he had already wiped away. He had to know, see for himself what had transpired. Everything he knew about Trip's combat history, the horrible things he had allegedly been forced to do, came from second hand sources. He had to see it for himself just once to maybe gain some understanding of what was going on in the head of the man he thought he knew and understood so well.

"Mister Reed." Archer intoned while keying the intercom system.

"Sir?"

"Do we have the footage from the Xindi boarding action on December twenty eighth twenty on fifty four?" It was a gamble, but seeing it would be better than asking one of the engineers who had witnessed it.

"We do, sir."

"Can you send me access to the footage from engineering?"

There was a pause, the standard behavior when Reed was uncomfortable about something, "Yes, sir. But, sir..."

"Yes, lieutenant commander?"

"It is a bit hard to watch, sir." Reed's voice was a little choked.

"Understood."

On his desk console Archer watched as a file access protocol appeared to grant access to security archives. Three files were present, each representing footage taken from a different perspective in and around the engineering section. Opening the first he noted a time stamp interval of 1136 hours, he remembered now, they had detected the Xindi ship at 1052 that day, over the intervening forty four minutes the attack flotilla had moved to intercept Task Force: Saber and a boarding squadron had moved in to disgorge troops onto Enterprise. The initial lines of defense that had been formed had inadvertently allowed a squad of Xindi troops to be funneled towards engineering and the Reptilians had used the opportunity to have sappers move to destroy the warp core.

Archer queued up the footage and leaned back in his chair, seeing the first of fourteen Xindi enter the engineering hold. A camera centered up and over Trip, the M27 phase pistol still in the thigh holster as the first Xindi moved to attack at close range. Rather than go for the side arm Archer saw Tucker grabbing a pair of deck hooks, the yard long curved steel bars used for lifting heavy plating to access superstructure between decks. Trip moved with what almost seemed to be practiced fluidity as he hooked onto the rifle the Reptilian soldier was carrying, jerking it away and sending it careening across the floor. The hook in his right caught the Xindi in the small of the back, the momentary jerk of the reptilian being and the resistance against Trip's arm indicating it had punctured. With a sweep of his left arm Trip took the creature's left leg out from under him, dropping the assailant to the deck as the withdrawn right hook swung in to connect under the Xindi's jaw. Archer watched as the hook sunk into the flesh of the jaw, piecing up between the mandibular arch with sickening finality. A strong tug from Tucker completed the coup de grâce, and the reptilian slumped lifelessly to the floor. Archer concluded he had seen enough when a thought stuck him. The corpse that the engineer had attempted to obscure had been just outside the door of main engineering, not inside like this body now. He resolved to keep watching, to see what happened, where the explanation lay. The rumors about ripping the jaw off could have easily been an exaggeration of the events he had just witnessed.

He looked back up at the screen just in time to see Trip drop the hooks as another reptilian rushed him. The Xindi opted to go for a knife to attempt the kill in close quarters. Archer knew enough to realize that doing so was suicidal, Trip excelled in Marine combat martial arts, having received master level certification from MCMAP. Archer had, in the past, just sort of assumed that Trip simply liked being good at things, his training the result of his desire to challenge himself and excel, he never believed for a moment that his knowledge would have actually translated so easily into ability. Trip's counter attack was ferocious, clutching the wrist and brutally breaking the assailant's arm at the elbow thereby depriving the Xindi of the knife. The twist of the damaged limb forcing a silent scream from the reptilian as a booted foot crushed the right patella and sent the Xindi to the floor. Trip's foot shot upwards then came down hard on the soldier's throat with enough force that the entire body shook. But still, they remained inside engineering.

When the Xindi hit Trip from behind in a bull rush Archer nearly came out of his seat, finally understanding how nervous he was just watching the battle ex post facto. The two passed through the door to main engineering and out of the camera's view. Archer stopped the feed, nothing the time interval and opened the file containing the external engineering corridor feed indexing the archive footage to the time indicated. They landed in a sprawl, Trip turning around to lock the Xindi in a sankaku gatame. The triangle arm bar deprived the Xindi of his knife which was already reddened with human blood, Archer hadn't remember a report of anyone being stabbed, unless...but that was like Trip, not to report an injury, not wanting to have the words "despite being injured" applied to bump a bronze star to a silver. What Archer witnessed next was the most violent display of close combat he had ever seen. When the arm finally broke or dislocated, Trip had scrambled to a top position, bringing his knee down on the broken limb and reach around to grab the throat of the reptilian, digging fingers into the hard scaly flesh before gripping the jaw and beginning to wrench the head around almost completing a 180 degree turn before the Xindi's corpse, throat torn, jaw hanging dislocated and eyes wide and blank dropped to the deck plate.

He felt sick to his stomach, a gnawing sense of nausea at what he saw. The Charles Tucker he thought he knew so well had killed three Xindi without drawing his M27, two of them with bare hands. Any man capable of that kind of violence had baggage, either preceding it or as a result of it. He still had two full days before the impromptu demi-honeymoon was over, plenty of time for him to find out more about the things Trip never talked about, to maybe gain a better understanding of why Tucker had done the things he had done.

* * *

><p>T'Les cracked the door just slightly, the sounds coming from their room had ceased about an hour prior; sounds that had signaled that the couple required privacy which she had done her best to provide. This was not the first time they had engaged in such behavior in her home, nor was it likely to be their last. The emotions the house elicited in T'Pol were only magnified by her mate and as he processed them they were sent back to her in their most pure form. Vulcans tended to put all emotions in a small set of categories without considering that multiple emotions occurring simultaneously could create an utterly unique experience. Humans fully grasped concepts like this, they had their own language for these emotions and were endlessly referential. T'Pol was unprepared for and utterly swept up in how strong her own desires and passions could become when processed and returned by her mate who was very obviously passionate in his own right.<p>

The Viltan northern jet-stream had indeed brought a light rain, a column of clouds that slowly and quietly dumped their contents on the area in a slow and steady drizzle, nothing like the cyclical seven year heavy rains, but it had been enough to cause a palpable reaction in the three Vulcan women in her house. Her mother had taken her leave rather abruptly, a hint of mischief in her eyes moments before T'Pol and Trip stumbled back in from the courtyard, his hair disheveled and her daughter flushed a deep virdis shade, breathing heavily. She spoke in a choked voice, raw with emotion but attempting to hide it, indicating that they intended to retire for the evening. The matriarch had cocked an amused brow and stated succinctly, "The women of our clan are much too similar." T'Sar hadn't even made it to the door before T'Pol's first cry of passion could be heard muffled through the walls. T'Les herself had retired to the other end of the house to meditate, remembering the rains that had led to T'Pol's conception and reflecting, almost solemnly, on what would be required of her as a mother should her daughter ever lose her mate as she had. T'Les had remained strong for the sake of T'Pol, but with a half human child, capable of feeling the full brunt of both human and Vulcan emotion would her own resolve be enough? T'Pol was already a young adult when she had lost her father, she had been able to throw herself into her budding career to avoid reflecting on the emotional pain. T'Les had remained stolid in order not to disrupt the routine.

The fact that Solan's death had been so much of a random convergence of events served to benumb them to some of the pain of it. If Charles were to die though, it would doubtlessly be something that would serve to wound her daughter too severely to adequately reconcile. She found that she feared the idea greatly, Charles was a very agreeable mate to her daughter and a dutiful son-in-law. She realized it was entirely plausible that it would not just be her daughter who would outlive him, she herself might have to be witness to him aging and dying as well. There was a saying that was shared among both her people and humans; the brightest candle burned the quickest. Charles, by his very nature, was almost doomed to die before his time, and the thought of it brought a pronounced sadness as she reflected how much it was like what had happened to her own mate thirty nine years prior.

Where she stood now she looked into the room for just a moment, wishing to respect their privacy but also overwhelmed by a strange sense of curiosity and an inexorable need to know. The small line of light creeping in from the hall served to provide just enough illumination to see their forms lying in the bed, the sheet pulled over them. For a moment the sehlat cub curled at the foot of the bed lifted its head, looking at the door with squinted eyes before opening its mouth in a wide yawn and settling back into its position moments before. The form of her daughter was nestled against the chest of her mate, both of them laying on their sides with his arms around her, forming a circle of reassurance and lovei n the ancient way of lovers that would ward her against external threats. Her small hands were resting against his chest, face buried just slightly above them while his chin rested on the crown of her head. T'Les felt a moment of sadness and pity, the universe would not conspire to let them continue this bliss. If there was one thing she was certain of it was that balance in all things was the mandate of the cosmos and the more love, the more happiness, the more contentment that existed the more that would come against it in opposition. They were summarily doomed, and T'Les found a great sorrow in this that threatened to undo her reserve as she quietly closed the door and walked down the hall to her own room.

* * *

><p>Admiral Black rubbed his hands together with satisfaction, it had taken roughly 2 hours worth of comm tag and a day and a half, but he had finally reached Tucker at his mother-in-law's house on Vulcan. The initial details he had been able to supply Tucker with regarding Dark Water had the engineer almost salivating. He could tell he had the younger man hooked on the idea but decided to slow play his hand; he had Tucker on the line, but he didn't want to throw the hook and lose this fish. Black had calmly suggested that Tucker discuss the matter with his wife before committing to anything, and if she had any questions he'd be more than happy to discuss anything non-classified regarding the project with her. Tucker seemed enthused and grateful that MCS was willing to extend that kind of courtesy. Black made it clear that he wasn't tearing up the EAS request and they would understand if he still wished to resign his commission, but that in the remaining year of service he had left they would much appreciate his contribution to the project. Black had been called out of his office and upon returning forty minutes later learned the Tucker had tried to contact him. He immediately attempted to return the call to discover that Tucker was taking a pet sehlat for a walk. Black suspected some measure of misdirection as the concept of a pet sehlat just seemed horribly ridiculous to him. He was beginning to suspect he had been blown off when another call pulled him away from his office just as Tucker attempted to return the missed call. This time the commander had the foresight to inform the Admiral that he wouldn't be going anywhere for the next six standard hours to allow a window for communication.<p>

Tucker had been pleased to inform the Admiral that both he and his wife had viewed it as a great opportunity, specifically that she viewed missing out on the chance to assist in the development and to build the first Warp 8 engine would be "illogical". Black took a moment to make certain they understood what his placement in the project would entail; he would not be free to leave for roughly six months after the project began and he would be taking a sub-orbital commute from Cape Canaveral to either San Francisco, San Diego, Baruun Urt, or Detroit at least twice a month to oversee other aspects of the project. Tucker seemed pleased he would be primarily stationed in Florida, his wife had only said that it was "very agreeable", Black's contact with Vulcans had been limited despite his position, but he assumed that it constituted concession on the part of the Commanders, admittedly, lovely spouse.

At the moment he felt almost giddy, Dark Water promised to produce a ground-up design for mass production heavy cruisers that would far out-compete the already successful CGX and CG series of cruisers. They had discovered during the 47 war that the Klingon D-7 was a formidable foe with better armor and firepower than the DD and DDG, and it was suspected that it could still outperform the CG/X models in a stand-up fight, the advantage lay with MCS's propensity for high maneuverability craft, superior electronic warfare systems, and a devotion to accurate fire and precision guided ordnance. In practice the DD and DDG destroyers and frigates routinely beat back advancing Klingon forces up to and including the heavy battle cruisers. The plans for dark water, however, indicated a ship that would be able to stand toe to toe with the Klingon battle cruisers and annihilate them. The Romulans had presented another type of threat entirely, it was clear that the Romulans were planning to rely on guile and subterfuge to further their interests. A different rule set was going to be necessary to counter that threat, but a nigh-invulnerable battleship capable of engaging both superior sized and numerous smaller targets was going to fulfill either role admirably.

"Sir, Admiral Gardner on the line for you." His aide chirped through the intercom on his desk.

"Thank you, ensign Collier, put him through." Black spoke in an even but commanding tone.

"Alright Greg, what's the word?" Gardner asked, his voice gruff as usual.

"We've got Tucker, he'll be assuming the lead for Dark Water in four months when Enterprise puts back into port."

"He agreed?" Gardner sounded surprised, almost baffled.

"He sure did, he didn't say to tear up the EAS request, but he certainly sounded eager to see the project through. Even if we only have him until the engine is built and the power systems installed, his expertise will be invaluable." Black's expression was self-satisfied, almost smug, if his projections were correct, securing Tucker would shave roughly two years off the test-bed ship.

"What about that Vulcan of his? I imagine she's going to want to head back to Vulcan once she's off Enterprise."

"When I told them they'd be at Cape Canaveral she said it was 'very agreeable'." Black replied.

Gardner chuckled, "Did she now?"

"Yes. Why?"

"For a Vulcan that's pretty high praise."

"Never had much experience with Vulcans, Sam. So she's amiable to the idea?"

Gardner nodded, "They'll never say outright that they like something, its always shades of agreeable. Very agreeable ranks right up there with 'that's great'."

"Alright, Sam, just one question...who is getting oversight on this?" Black's expression shifted to the narrowed eyes that characterized his no-nonsense deadly serious persona.

"We hadn't parsed it out yet...we were thinking of tapping Leonard for the position."

"I want Dark Water..." Black said the words slowly and deliberately.

"Greg, isn't your plate a little full?"

"I'm tired of playing golf with the sycophants and bureaucrats and I'm getting enough time on the court that my tennis elbow is giving me fits. I've shaved a minute off my mile and I'm getting twenty more sit-ups in on my physicals. I'm supposed to be a goddamn admiral, and this feels like retirement. I'm bored, Sam, I've got more than enough time to focus on dark water and you _know_ that if I get oversight I'll make sure that by the time that ship is done there won't be anything in two hundred light years that's going to be able to stand up against it in a fight."

Gardner let out a long exasperated sigh, "We've got seven lower ranking flag officers who are chomping at the bit for this one, the man who produces a workable battleship design is destined to sit on the admiralty board, you've already got a seat."

"Do you _really_ want to see me bored and idle?" Black narrowed his eyes.

Gardner grimaced, "Alright, I'll talk it over with Forrest and Sanderson, I suppose you've already got Johnson, Clarke, and Deng backing your play on this."

"The Marines are pragmatic, they just want to know the ship is built with effective combat posture in mind." Black countered, his disciplined and perfunctory style had endeared him to the Marines long ago. He counted Bill Kim and C. R. Johnson as close personal friends, and was God father to Clarke's two sons, truth be told he was two inches from being a Marine officer himself; those two inches, however, had been the two inches by which his foot got caught in a rappelling rope and effectively destroyed his knee when he crashed into the rocks when he lost control of the descent.

"I suppose you're also the best sonuvabitch we've got for getting what will be needed for the project, red tape be damned." Gardner offered with a cross between a grimace and a smirk.

"You know it." Black grinned.

"Alright, Greg, I'll push the point, just make sure this ship is the best goddamn thing anyone has ever seen anywhere, we're putting our necks out for UNE on this one."

"Look who you're talking too, Sam..."

"Yeah...right, Gardner out."

* * *

><p>Archer stood face to face, staring into the suddenly deathly empty eyes of his chief engineer. A moment before Trip had been looking down into T'Pol's eyes with a big grin forming on his face. They were communicating through the bond, he was certain of it, entire conversations fully contextualized with the emotions laid bare and the pretense gone inside their heads. T'Pol's eyes were wide and expressive, pupils dilated as she looked lovingly, for a Vulcan, at her sa-telsu. Their duffels were still slung over their shoulders and Tucker had an ancient looking lirpa in his right hand. It had to have been at least several hundred years old, and Archer found what he believed could serve as an ice-breaker to plow through the glacial expanse that now existed between him and Commander Tucker.<p>

"Souvenir?"

Tucker's face remained blank, detached, cold, "It is traditional for a husband in the clan of Sokel to be the bearer of one of the clan's lirpas."

"I see." Jon swallowed, his mind rolling back to that day outside engineering back in the expanse. Trip's expression had been the same as it was now, a kind of mental disconnect that showed on his face. Trip killed three reptilian shock troopers without pulling a trigger, what could he do with a lirpa if the impulse to kill hit him?

"Do you require that we report for duty immediately or is it permissible that we return our personal belongings to our quarters, captain?" T'Pol intervened.

"You're not technically on duty until oh six hundred tomorrow, and you're not technically due to report back in for another three hours, I would like a word with commander Tucker though." Archer found he had no problems talking to T'Pol. Something about her was even more stunning to him, it was suddenly very hard to avoid that still quiet part of his brain that had always found her attractive.

"Ha-shal etek, bek-tor nash'veh, k'diwa."

Archer felt a sudden spike of anger, jealousy as he heard the way she spoke to Trip, the softness in her voice, so servile and open, trusting and vulnerable. The knowledge and understanding of the significance of Vulcan marriage as transmitted to his mind by Surak's Katra seemed to suddenly snap into the front of his thoughts, "this is the Vulcan heart," the subtle, muted, but no less fiery passion between the katra-tel-tor. Why him? What had he done to earn her? The thoughts of the thermographic image of their bodies entwined on their shared bunk three days prior once again came to mind, and his thought processes didn't end there as some part of his brain tried to fill in the gaps. He found an overwhelming urge to hit Trip, to knock him to the ground and just start beating the hell out of him. Some superego type construct, the part of him that believed rules were absolutely necessary, the part that was trying to remind him that Trip and T'Pol loved each other was trying to convince himself that the very thought was utterly ridiculous even in a context of absolution from the constraints of society and military discipline.

"I'll be along shortly, darlin'." He replied in a soft low tone, not turning to look at her with the chillingly dead expression he currently wore.

Archer stood still, refusing to lower his gaze or look away, not so much out of anger as a strange almost instinctive fear. Before he jumped out of that lock-out chamber a month ago, Archer had never felt a single bit of fear of Trip Tucker, never felt threatened by him, and most certainly never felt this strangely seething jealousy. He couldn't force his tongue to engage, words to form and leave his lips, all he could do was stare back at that face and those strangely unmoving eyes.

"Was there somethin' you needed to discuss with me, cap'n." Trip finally said flatly, breaking the stalemate.

"A mister Suvak of SID thirty one requested your technical expertise regarding a matter of post operational concern." Archer choked out.

"Is that all, sir?"

"No, both Admirals Gardner and Forrest wished to speak to you regarding your disposition after our impending deployment." Archer found himself trying not to move.

"Very well, sir. With your permission, sir, I'll ensure everything is settled and contact Suvak." There was still an edge to Trip's voice, and his adherence to protocol was strange where he would have normally been very familiar.

"Did you get it all out of your system?" Archer forced the words out, muscles tensed and readied for action.

"I do not understand the nature of the question, sir." His voice got more precise the angrier he got. Archer could almost smell the aggression seething from his former friend.

"You and T'Pol, are you going to be able to keep your hands off each other for the next four months?" Archer dropped his voice low so that he could not be overheard, an acerbic edge on the words.

"That should not be an issue considering duty schedule, sir." Trip wasn't making eye contact now, it was possible that he was dangerously close to snapping.

Archer grit his teeth, the part of his mind that had always been the mature, wise, voice of reason, the part that had forced him to talk the Xindi into seeing reason rather than orbitally bombarding them, the part that made contact with over a dozen species and had helped smooth relations with Earth's immediate galactic neighbors, screamed at him to be a man. He had to accept the fact that Trip and T'Pol were in love, probably meant for each other. If either had told him the truth of the matter back in the expanse, this silly territoriality of his would have likely reared its ugly head then.

"Look, Trip, I was a little out of line...I want to maintain discipline, but I can't very well come between husband and wife, you're both on twelve hour shifts for the next four months, but as department heads you two can shift things around in your departments so there is a little overlap time for you two."

"It's your boat, sir, you have to do what you think is judicious." He still wouldn't make eye contact.

"Trip, I'm trying to be an adult here..."

Archer almost recoiled when the cold blue eyes locked on him, "Don't try to be my friend, we're past that point. Just be the skipper and put the other pretense aside, if I've gotta make it through the next four months, I will."

"Trip..."

"By your leave, sir." Tucker straightened.

"I'm not done discussing this."

"Sir, you cannot force me to discuss a non-performance related personal issue." His eyes were locked up and away again.

Archer shook his head, arms akimbo and a sigh leaving him, "Very well, dismissed mister Tucker."

"Aye, sir." With that Trip turned and headed down the corridor towards the turbolifts.

Archer just stood there for a moment pondering how it had come to this point, how their friendship had come undone. At what point had the lanky fifteen year old kid turned into a man? At what point had that enthusiastic energy and easy smile given way to coldly murderous ability? Archer's mind rolled back to that day eighteen years ago at Cape Canaveral. The test-bed platform for the warp 6 engine was being developed at Eglin AFB and was moved to Canaveral for orbital ascent and subsequent testing. Trip's father had been involved in the project and it had been during that hot fateful August that Jonathan had first met Charles Anthony Tucker III. Trip already had an eye for technical matters as an adolescent and he was sometimes "snuck" into the project to lend another pair of eyes and a fresh way of thinking to problems that arose during the development process. He wasn't entirely sure how the friendship had formed, he was nine years Trip's senior and already a commissioned lieutenant junior grade, Trip wasn't even out of High School yet. Jonathan had attempted to seem like a big shot, talking about how he was at Canaveral to take the test-ship into orbit for the tests, when the young, rough around the edges and easily smiling Trip began explaining how the warp six platform was a waste of time since the very next upgrade cycle would have them all running warp 7.5, Archer's jaw had almost dropped. The fifteen year old kid would take breaks in talking to stare at girls walking by in their bikinis, then once again launch into a technical fusillade that Jon had barely managed to grasp.

He had kept tabs on Trip's progress over the years, heard stories about his propensity for goofing off in school chasing girls and playing sports. Standing a hair's breadth from failing classes just to pull off an A by the time the semester was over. When he got bored with High School he just skipped a grade, testing out and graduating a year ahead of time so he could get on with his post-secondary education. He had offers from dozens of schools, and not just for his academics, he was a terror on the football field playing iron-man ball as a pass rusher and offensive back. His rushing yards were nearly as impressive as his academics. They had reconnected during the warp 7.5 project, Tucker had done much of the design work that overhauled the never-implemented warp 6 engine into the faster and more powerful 7.5s. Their friendship had seemed to solidify into what Archer was certain would be an unbreakable bond, but here he stood facing the fact that it had, indeed, been broken. It was almost too literary; a woman had come between them, just not the woman he would have expected. He had to reconcile the fact that his quasi-infatuation and physical attraction to T'Pol was nothing compared to the obvious love that Trip and her shared.

He wasn't willing to let it go at that, he'd do what he could to try to fix the damage with the time he had, but it was a daunting task that lay ahead of him. He never shrunk from daunting tasks in the past, this would be no different. Erika would be able to provide him with some sound advice, she always did. He would need to be honest with her too, tell her why he was having such a hard time accepting the relationship and take his lumps on that front too. Maybe that was the problem, for too long he'd been getting away with not taking his lumps and it had made him spoiled. It was time for Jonathan Archer to remember that he wasn't some kid with the universe laid out before him anymore, he was going to have to start being an adult.

* * *

><p><strong>[! - Author's Note- !]<strong>

**Okay, this will be the last chapter for a few weeks at least, I know they have been coming less frequently lately, but I'm starting to get back into the groove for TCD2 and am going to work on a few more chapters on getting that story moved along for the Mass Effect fans out there. This is NOT the end of ID1, just an intermission, I estimate I've only completed about half of this "book" so far so expect it to resume some time in late October or early November.**


	26. Chapter 26

**[! Author's Note !]**

**Okay, I lied again...well sort of. I sort of realized that chapter 25 was not the transition point for the intermission that I wanted it to be, there were things I had to wrap up to make the passage of time flow more logically. Thus, it will be Chapter 26 that will serve as a breaking point for Book I, and the story will resume with chapter 27 after some more work has been done on my other stories. So...here we go.**

* * *

><p>Archer glanced tentatively over to his science officer, over the past four months he had tried repeatedly to reconnect with his chief engineer only to be rebuffed again and again. Trip was never rude, he just always made sure he had a convenient excuse to beg off with, even going as far to take extra responsibilities and projects on for the express purpose of being able to avoid an invitation to the captain's mess. At least Archer was becoming increasingly sure that was the case; it was generally believed that if invited to the captain's table you did <em>not<em> refuse unless you had some duty or obligation to the ship that precluded your presence. He knew for a fact that Trip went many a night without a meal for the express purpose of avoiding his company, and he found that rather than make him angry, it just hurt now. Trip was back to his affable self, but there was always a subtle strain when they conversed about anything, like Tucker was trying his hardest to be nice, be polite, try to be "himself" with the captain.

"Sub-commander..."

T'Pol was finally starting to show a little, a tell-tale sign of her condition and there was a growing sense of excitement on the ship over the pregnancy. She and Trip had agreed that they would not reveal the baby's gender until they were prepared to depart _Enterprise_ for whatever the future held in store for them. "Yes, captain?"

"Any chance I could get you and Commander Tucker to join Commander Hernandez and I for dinner this evening?" If he ambushed T'Pol with the request, Trip might end up co-opted into attendance, and one week out from Sol he was rapidly running out of opportunities.

"Commander Tucker will be engaged with his quarterly small arms re-qualification this evening, captain." The Vulcan replied.

"That shouldn't take him too long..." Hernandez declared frankly, not sure if she was helping or hurting.

"He will be performing additional qualification exercises on the Enhanced Battle Rifle and Designated Marksman Rifle this time which will likely increase the time to complete the drills by two hundred thirty eight percent." T'Pol answered evenly.

"How many weapon systems is he qualified on now?" Reed inquired, slipping his way into the conversation.

"After today it will be nine, providing there are no setbacks." T'Pol replied, the faintest hint of pride detectable in her voice.

Reed grunted, a chagrined look on his face, "Who seriously needs to know nine weapon systems?"

Travis Mayweather spoke up, never lifting his eyes from his navigation console, "You're qualified in that many, aren't you lieutenant commander?"

Sato smirked, "Ship systems don't count, even I'm qualified to operate those."

Reed looked embarrassed and more than a little crest-fallen. "Actually, I'm only qualified on three ground combat systems..."

"Ever seen them do their range work?" Sato inquired.

"No, I haven't actually, never did much care for the smell of cordite." Reed replied, frowning slightly.

"I have witnessed commander Tucker performing his quarterly range duty." T'Pol replied.

"How good a shot is he?" Malcolm seemed keenly interested in the way one sought to learn of a potential rival's weaknesses.

"It is a highly subjective measure, I would not attempt to provide an appraisal of his skill level without a sufficient point of reference." T'Pol hadn't managed to start sounding any less Vulcan in the past four months.

"What is his range time?" Mayweather inquired, again keeping his eyes dutifully glued to the flight controls.

"Nineteen thirty hours."

Hernandez had tried to play the role of peacemaker, or rather, family preserver trying to smooth over the strained relationship between Archer and Tucker. The _Enterprise_ as a family had seemed to follow the ubiquitous paradigm of son rebelling against father with Tucker breaking free of the influence and control of Archer to establish himself as his own adult. When Jon had explained that he thought his personal attraction to T'Pol had been part of the source of resentment she had almost been prepared to write him off for good, but she had exercised restraint and upon reflection had realized she had been attracted to other men over the years too. It didn't stop her from razzing him a good deal about it, but she had worked to be understanding.

She was beginning to believe that she and Jon would never have anything that approached a normal relationship, it was like they were already an old married couple that had been accustomed to each other for decades. She didn't find that she particularly wanted a romantic or even sexual relationship with Archer, she just wanted to be with him like she had been for years. She was relatively certain they would both seek physical fulfillment elsewhere, but they'd never be parted from one another. Trip and T'Pol, on the other hand, had the genuine item, a very clear utter and all consuming passion for one another. Seven more days and _Enterprise_ would be back at LaGrange 2 for additional refits and three days after that both Tucker and T'Pol would be leaving the ship for good. In a way it made her sad, but it didn't hurt nearly as bad as watching the subtle and understated agony Archer had been in ever since the couple returned from the three day liberty on Vulcan.

"When's he get off his shift, sub-commander?" She inquired, casually.

"Nineteen hundred is when his shift is completed, but traditionally he remains an additional ten to twenty minutes to ensure that all possible concerns or projects from his shift will be adequately compensated for by the following shift." T'Pol answered succinctly.

"Why exactly, again, is he pulling the twelve hours shifts?" Archer asked of his XO, his eyes betraying his belief that there had been a measure of conspiracy involved.

"He insisted that the additional two hours on his normal ten hour shift gives him more time to ensure Kelby knows all the tricks of the trade." Hernandez countered, arching her brows in a helpless expression that as much said _"I didn't like it, but he made a good point"_.

"We could go spy on him at the range." Hoshi posited, "We'll have time to grab dinner and then head up to the Starboard catwalk to watch the show."

"Would that not constitute and additional stressor for Commander Tucker to have to deal with?" T'Pol presented, "I believe the human terms is, 'no pressure'."

"Nothing wrong with keeping him on his toes." Malcolm stifled the smirk.

* * *

><p>Trip left Engineering with fifteen minutes to spare, rushing back to his and T'Pol's quarters to change out of his jump suit and into a pair of sweatpants and a T-Shirt. When he entered their billet he half expected to find his wife waiting for him, instead he found the quarters empty except for the sehlat cub. It had been a cultural concession that allowed the creature on the ship at all, it was generally assumed that Archer's dog was a colossal wink-and-nod concession made by MCS for their vanguard captain. In some ways the sehlat was better behaved than Porthos, he was now, as he did most days, sleeping on their bunk, looking up only to yawn then once again lowered its head.<p>

Trip's mental processes had been so focused on getting ready to head to the range in the powered down nacelle that he hadn't bothered trying to connect to her through the bond. When he reached out to her mind he sensed she was in the company of others and allowed his thoughts to just barely brush hers. He determined she was having dinner, the atmosphere was close and quiet, she was clearly in the captain's mess and based on her mental perceptions she was clearly in the company of Archer and Hernandez. He pulled back, letting his thoughts drift out of the bond as not to disturb her. He was experiencing more than a little irritation and discomfort, he still had not come to terms with Archer, and while T'Pol's relationship with the captain had normalized he still felt a sense of betrayal that she would choose to associate with someone he considered to be a foe, even if Jon was still his superior.

He stripped out of the uniform and quickly washed his face and hands before donning a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt. Lacing up his athletic shoes he checked the time, he still had seven minutes to make it to the catwalk. He hated coming in just under the wire, so upon finishing attending to the shoes and exiting the quarters he began jogging to the Starboard access tube. T'Pol's quarters were on the port side of E-deck, but fortunately closer to the catwalk than his old quarters were, crammed in the bow section port side. He wove between the crew moving through the corridors; alpha shift going to get dinner or heading to the recreation hall, charlie shift doing the same in preparation of replacing bravo shift. Upon reaching the access ladder he began climbing two rungs at a time, finally making it to the catwalk with four minutes to spare. Major Hayes and Gunnery Sergeant Coyle were already there waiting, the seventy one meter long catwalk converted into an impromptu range with weapons, magazines, and boxed ammunition already set up.

"Gentlemen..." Trip intoned with a nod.

"We'd like to start you on the DMR and EBR, commander. It'll probably take longer for you to get accustomed to the feel for them since you're not going to get much in the way of test firing we should just take it slow." Hayes stated evenly, lifting the lengthened and scoped designated marksman rifle, "Typically we'd have you working this on a three hundred yard target, then take it up to four, five, and six hundred yards respectively. Since we don't have that much space the rifle and load was modified to simulate a three hundred yard engagement range."

Tucker accepted the proffered weapon, bringing the stock tight to his shoulder then, carefully, tucking his elbow in to avoid chicken-winging sighted down the weapon. "It's got good balance on it, heavy on the front end, feels like it knows where it wants t'send the bullet."

"Exactly commander, the heavier barrel helps reduced vibration and the weight helps keep muzzle climb to a minimum." Hayes nodded.

"So you've got half pressure loads and about, what, two mils worth'a offset on the scope?" Tucker queried after a moment sighting down the weapon.

"Very good, commander, you figured that out already?"

"Just doin' the basic arithmetic, major." Trip grinned sheepishly. It hadn't taken him much effort to crunch the numbers in his head and he knew a few things about ballistics. His dad had taught him to shoot as a boy and he found something fascinating about the physics associated with the practice. Charge size, bullet weight, diameter, barrel length, wind, humidity, with an understanding of what they did, how they effected a bullets flight path you could accurately predict within a few inches where a bullet would strike just about every time. Of course there was only so much math that could be done in the head in a given moment, and sometimes a situation called for instinct and gut to get metal on target.

"Well then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on understanding the ballistics, lets see how you deal with engaging our targets. We've got a two inch plate at the end of the catwalk with a one inch diameter circle on it, five rounds on the circle will simulate about one minute of angle, that'll qualify you." Hayes pointed down to the end of the catwalk.

Trip stepped to the firing line, bringing the rifle up and pulling the stock tight into his shoulder, the barrel shroud resting in his extended left hand. "Got it, how many shots do I have to get on paper?"

"You have eight rounds in the mag, and you've got to get five in the ring." Gunney Coyle spoke up.

Trip let out a single chuckling sound, "No pressure, right?"

"You'll do fine, commander." Hayes said in his usual flat tone, but there was still something reassuring about the words, he sounded convinced of what he was saying.

The enhanced battle rifle had been a pleasure to shoot, the cartridge itself was powerful, much more so than the assault rifle he was used to, but the action was crisp and the heavier barrel gave him a palpable feeling of confidence when swinging the weapon in on his targets, the familiarity of the advanced combat optic and the feel of a long rifle allowed him to qualify with ease, a task he had barely managed with the DMR. The Designated Marksman Rifle had been considerably harder to manipulate and control and it had been with the final round of the magazine he had managed to qualify.

Hayes was stifling a smile, "Very good, commander, you sure we can't talk you into changing branches?"

Tucker smiled sheepishly again, he loved to shoot, found something satisfying about going to the range and putting some rounds on target. Something about the smell of burned off propellant when it was just him shooting didn't bring back memories of 47 or the Romulans. Watching the bullets smack into metal targets or punch through paper was as completely disassociated with the killing that had occurred during the two demi-wars to him as playing a game of football was from close quarters combat to him. "They've still kind of gotta use for me with the starfleet, major."

"Well, then, lets go ahead and get the easy part out of the way so we can all go enjoy our evening." Hayes smirked back.

"Want me to start with the mike one two?" Trip pointed to the carbine length assault rifle.

"That would be best, then we can set up the combat pistol targets." Hayes replied.

Trip lifted the familiar weapon, pulling it tight into his shoulder having failed to notice the group of spectators that had formed behind Gunnery Sergeant Coyle. With knees bent slightly he eyes the target area, a set of reciprocating metal disks, five over five. When struck they made a loud clinking sound easily indicating a hit. With a single magazine of thirty rounds he had to place at least twelve on target to requalify, to ensure he maintained his current sharp shooter status he had to hit with twenty four. His focus crept into his eyes and the tip of his finger, nothing existed but the target, his rifle, and the parts of his body where the rifle touched.

"Begin." Hayes declared.

The rifle snapped upwards and Trip moved to acquire the first gong, and squeezed the trigger.

"Watch this." Hoshi mumbled, leaning in close to Reed and Mayweather to be heard.

A series of sounds merged together, the loud popping sound of the propellant igniting and the hot gasses expanding outwards, pushing the bullet forward, the crack of the bullet moving two and a half times the speed of sound, the metallic clink of the rounds striking the metal targets, and the clatter of thermo-plastic casings hitting the deck. The first five fires coming back to back in such quick succession the uninitiated might confuse it for fully automatic fire. The next five were still quick but nothing compared to the first five as Trip shifted from the larger top disk targets to the much smaller lower five to reset the top row. He repeated the cycle two more times, each time the three sounds occurring in perfect harmony; thirty rounds discharged in a little over eight seconds. With a quick press of the release on the side of the magazine well he dropped the empty container to the ground and pulled back on the charging handle, holding the slide release in the open position to lock the bolt carrier to the rear.

"Bloody hell...he's good." Malcolm uttered under his breath.

"Thirty for thirty, good to see you're not getting rusty, commander." Hayes commented, looking down at a PADD in which he was entering data.

"I any closer to closin' in on staff sarg'nt Cummin's' record?" Trip asked as he un-slung the weapon.

"You're going to have to get in line for that one, commander." Hayes chuckled.

"How far off was I?" Trip asked, looking over to the PADD, still oblivious to his audience. "Damn...really? I gotta shave two whole seconds off?"

"Cummings is a beast, sir." Gunney Coyle declared.

"He sure as hell is..." Trip began fastening his thigh holster, "Just the mike fifty two now, right?"

"That's correct commander, going for the record this time or did you burn it all up on the M twelve?" Hayes asked as he queued up the paper pistol targets.

"You betcha...who do I have to beat on this one, again?" Trip grinned as he picked up the side-arm, pulling the slide back a quarter inch to ensure a round was chambered .

"Record belongs to Captain Dan Cooke, commanding, bravo company, second battalion, sixth marines on March seventh, twenty one thirty seven." Gunnery Sergeant Coyle intoned with almost mechanical precision.

"Nobody on the boat?" Trip furrowed his brow.

"Negative, sir, you beat us all your first requal we were stationed here for." Coyle replied.

Hayes tapped a few buttons on the PADD, "Weapons free."

T'Pol clamped her hands behind her back, she had watched him practicing with the side-arm before, his speed was almost incomprehensible, a product of the series five gene augmentations designed to produce super soldiers. His hand went from resting just above the weapon to clamped around the handgun in a rigid weaver-stance which let out a staccato series of loud pops. Bringing the weapon back close to his body the magazine dropped to the deck as he quickly snatched another from a pouch on the thigh holster, sliding it into the grip and hitting the slide release in a smooth motion and bringing the weapon back to bear in the weaver stance. He held sight picture a moment then lowered the weapon, hitting the magazine release and catching it in his left hand before working the slide and catching the unspent round as it was ejected from the weapon, setting the three items down on the ledge on from which he had initially taken it.

"Weapon clear." Trip declared crisply.

"What happened? A misfire?" Travis inquired, looking from Hoshi back to the fire line and back again.

Sato's mouth was wide, she shook her head slowly, not believed what she had just seen, "That was hardly a misfire."

Hayes crossed to the five paper targets, the front row of three each containing a neat pair of holes in the neck of the outline. The rear two targets each contained a single hole right in the center of the head area. Eight lethal wounds total, five targets reduced, the double taps to the necks designed to rapidly incapacitate while the head wounds would have been for all practical purposes instantly lethal.

"Point niner five one seconds, and that's the record Commander, and plenty of witnesses." Hayes nodded and looked past Tucker's shoulder, prompting the commander to turn.

Before he had made eye contact he felt the surge of pride through the bond. _Spyin' on me, darlin'?_

_There was some curiosity regarding your firearm abilities, k'diwa._

Hoshi immediately launched into applause, "Nice shooting, commander."

"The peanut gallery, huh?" Trip grinned then noticed Archer and Hernandez, he nodded, "Cap'n, commander."

"T'Pol said you were re-qualifying this evening, figured we'd do dinner and a show." Archer tried to sound casual but there was a little of awkwardness in his voice.

Trip replied with faux personability, "The real show was me gettin' my butt kicked by the DMR, I pulled that off by the skin'a my teeth."

"If we can get everyone to swear off on the result we can certify this as the record for the five target pistol drill." Hayes commented, stepping to a position where both Tucker and the spectators were plainly visible.

"We might have to put an asterisk on that, Major. I modified the trigger on that M fifty two; changed it from a three point two to a two point eight pound trigger pull."

Hayes shrugged, "We can note it was modified but honestly, commander, most of the old mike fifty twos didn't have a set number on the trigger pull, they typically were between two six and three five."

"Tinkering with weapons is risky business." Reed admonished, his body language showing more than a little jealousy.

Mayweather smirked at the armory officer, "Tinkering is what led to the M twenty seven A one, lieutenant commander."

"Tinkering with a phased won't cause it to explode in your hand." Malcolm protested.

"Neither will fiddling with the trigger group on a handgun." Hoshi countered wryly.

"Alright folks," Trip interjected, "Lets clear the Nacelle so Kelby can get the coils fired back up. Vamoose!"

"Care to join us for coffee, commander?" Archer inquired, hoping the impromptu overture would catch him without a plausible excuse where-by to excuse himself.

"I gotta head down to engineerin' once we drop off all this stuff," Trip lifted the EBR and DMR from where they were sitting against the bulkhead, "and make sure we getting everything back up and runnin' I'd hate for a seven day trip back to L two to end up takin' ten on my account."

"Maybe tomorrow..." Archer was fishing.

"Not likely, sir, I've got about seventeen days of work and ten days to get it all done in." Tucker stated plainly as he bent down to grab a steel case of 6.8mm assault rifle ammunition in one hand and one of larger 8.6mm marksman rounds in the other.

"Trip, we took a few shots, but its not that bad." Archer scoffed.

"Not the damage that's the issue. Convertin' over for Warp eight protocols is gonna require a refit of the whole EPS grid. They're gonna be replacin' every EPS conduit and manifold in the system at Lagrange two. Problem is those heavy duty numbers are shoddy, lousy mountin' hardware, and they bleed off power from the connection points. They're not gonna pass muster, so we need to fabricate adapters to makes up for the bad mounts and go ahead and get 'em emplaced before the work starts of Kelby's gonna have about a month of work to do after the fact."

"I had no idea..." Archer choked out.

"Most folks don't see why they're still usin' the damn things." Trip shifted the other case of ammunition over to his left hand, looping a pair of fingers through the carrying handle on each and grabbing the assault rifle with his right. "Major, need anybody else to carry anythin'?"

"Me and the gunney can take care of it Commander, just report back to Staff Sergeant Chang at Armory three, sir."

"Roger that." Trip stepped to the door, slung the assault rifle and began climbing down the access ladder one handed. "Down ladder, down ladder. Anyway..." He continued between grunts as he worked his way down the ladder laden as he was, "that's just one of the problems we need to address. We still need to make that ceramic bufferin' system for the main deflector to cut down on energy loss, fabricate new ammunition feed flexies for the extra sabot magazines for batteries three and thirteen. And, unless you want to be gettin' this request tossed up to you three times a week, I'd really better put that large-screen display in the mess area."

Archer chuckled, "Couldn't Kelby just tell them 'no' like you do?"

"Kelby is a good guy, but he just does not have a very convincin' pissed-off face. He'd say 'no' and the next thing you know they'd be submittin' the request directly to you, cap'n."

Archer furrowed his brows in concern, "Is that going to be a problem for the department?"

"Nope, everyone in engineerin' respects him, he held everything together on the warp eight run back to Earth with the Vulcan High Command, managed to actually tweak efficiency, and he's fair, he won't have any problems with the department."

Trip reached to T'Pol through the bond upon reaching the bottom of the access ladder, _Careful on the ladder, darlin'._

Her mental reply sounded at once amused and a little offended, _Trip, I know how to use a ladder._

_I know, but you're new to this whole pregnant thing, darlin'._

_My morphology has not yet been pronouncedly effected._

Trip waited in place for his observers to descend, and waiting dutifully and almost apprehensively while T'Pol made her way down.

"She's not about to pop yet, commander." Hoshi said under her breath, just close enough for Trip to hear.

Trip blushed, stepping back and away, suddenly remember that while the present company and majority of the MARSOC detachment were privy to the truth about his relationship with T'Pol, he had to maintain appearances that he was nothing more than stud-horse to the remainder of the crew. T'Pol finished her descent without issue and took up a position just slightly closer to Commander Tucker than would be dictated under normal circumstances, hands clamped behind her back. To the untrained eye it would simply appear that T'Pol was wearing a slightly looser uniform than usual, only those who knew her well could detect the physical signs of her pregnancy.

Hernandez was the first to speak up, "You look tired, commander, maybe you should retire for the night."

"Sorry, ma'am, no can do, I need to get fabrication started, we've got make and prep installation for eight hundred and thirty hardware adapters, and that's just the first thing on the list." Trip replied with a bit of a frown.

_K'diwa, you will not be returning to our quarters tonight?_

_I'm sorry, darlin', but I've just got too much to take care of._

Trip had been true to his word, almost too much so. T'Pol had been experiencing some slight mood swings and hormone imbalance that had become more pronounced the last month and a half. Her desire to spend time with her mate had prompted her to begin some creative rescheduling of science/astronomical phenomena department duties. To her chagrin Trip had been doing as much to avoid spending to much time alone with her as he had been trying to avoid the captain. She never felt a sense of rejection, always she could feel the soothing threads of his affection in the bond, but now it was tamped down by the weight of almost self-mortifying discipline. He quashed his own desires with a sort of mental brutality that was hard for her to be privy too, even harder to imagine what it must feel like to him. He was sleeping less, eating less, he had also become remarkably terse in most of his interactions. There had been comments that the commander had gotten progressively more cranky over the last four months which prompted a whole school of speculation over the cause.

She found many of them amusing, not because of their inherent inaccuracy but because of how close they came to the truth without actually striking upon it. Some speculated that it was lack of sex that was causing the problem. Implications were made of Vulcan frigidity and in the closeness of mutual quarters Tucker couldn't manually attend to certain biological proclivities. Others suggested that in accordance with Vulcan tradition they were now married and that Tucker didn't want to be tied down with T'Pol. One speculation posited that there was a fundamental disagreement between the two of what the child-to-be would be named and where it would be raised.

The last had a higher degree of plausibility by dint of the ability to suspend disbelief, it also implied that their relationship was inherently functional in its own right but they were subject to disagreements. In point of fact they had already arrived at both decisions with ease. She thought back remembering the day in sick-bay when Phlox had been able to scan and identify the baby's gender. Phlox retired back to his office on the pretense of checking something to give the couple a few moments alone with the revelation.

"K'diwa...I wish to name him for my father."

Trip was smiling wide, eyes loving and just barely rimmed in tears of joy, "Of course, darlin', what's our lil guy's name?"

"Solan." She said, her voice choked with emotion.

"That's a great name, baby. Our lil Solan." He placed a hand over her womb, resting it there.

There had, fortunately, been no further medical scares since her body's attack on the implantation site almost five months ago. All of the scans indicated a phenomenally healthy fetus with a remarkable mixture of both human and Vulcan genetic markers. Phlox had enthusiastically pointed out certain points on the genome map, identifying traits as either human or vulcan and what significance they carried. He seemed as enthusiastic as if the child to be was his own, smiling wide and stifling chortles.

"Such a fantastic pairing! I'm surprised you managed to do this so well on your own."

She and Trip had exchanged amused looks, "While Commander Tucker may not have objected to observation in that regard I can assure you I would have found such non-essential persons...distracting, given the situation."

Given his current disposition T'Pol was certain that Trip's reserve was nearing it's end. He had been correct that their intimacy had made refraining from engaging in acts of affection incredibly hard over the last four months. While the patrol had a marked degree of tension and risk related stress, it had been shorter than average. _Enterprise_ had been patrolling the border consistently, for 128 days straight. A week in they had discovered an active scan protocol that could at least detect cloaked Romulan ships, it was a clumsy method and required the _Enterprise_ to constantly broadcast its location much like early human Sonar. Six times they had been forced to engage and beat Romulan warships back across the cordon and into their space. All along the boarder there had been dozens of potential incursions and in each situation the sensor protocols they had developed helped turn back the Romulan ships or, in some occasions, destroy them.

The temporary coalition that had formed was torn on what possible punitive actions should be taken against the Romulan Empire. Both Andoria and, surprisingly, Vulcan favored an expeditionary force being sent into Romulan space to find and reduce strategic assets and military staging areas. Tellar had been in favor of Annexation while Rigel had agreed with Earth a tempered approach of economic embargo and containment was preferable. The debates where heated, almost seeming hostile at points, but there was no denying that there was something occurring between their five peoples. Trade, military exchange, and co-chaired projects had increased markedly. Andoria no long required Tellarite freighters be boarded and inspected after reporting into the regional outposts. Rigel had removed all trade duties, Vulcan was actually working with Andoria on a joint defense cordon.

_I understand, K'diwa, please be certain to attend to your nutritional intake and sleep requirement later._ It hurt a little to be deprived of her mate, but she understood his reasoning and the pain it was causing him too.

"Alright folks, I gotta get this issue back to the armory, y'all enjoy y'all's evenin's."

"Don't work too hard, Trip." Archer intoned as the engineer began to walk away.

"No promises." Tucker fired back in a crowing tone.

* * *

><p>MCS protocols dictated that maintaining warp coming into or while in transit of the Sol system was strictly forbidden except in time of war or other expedient emergencies. Even at full impulse it would take them several hours to reach Lagrange 2. Archer sat in the command couch reviewing department reports but was only half paying attention. Three days, three more days and he was losing both T'Pol and Trip, and while he felt he had made some serious progress with Tucker since their confrontation in the corridor after he returned from his R&amp;R on Vulcan almost five months ago, he knew things were still not "alright" between them. The other day he had seen perfectly calm and pleasant when Archer had come to examine progress in engineering, Tucker had cracked a few jokes, pointed out upgrades they had made and enthusiastically elaborated on what significance they held for the ship. It was almost like the old Trip was back, but there was something cold in his eyes, it seemed to indicate he was making either a supreme effort or was a phenomenal actor.<p>

Chief Yeoman Garnier interrupted his contemplation, "Sir, the invitations for the Naval Ball and Gala were transmitted twenty eight minutes ago and have completed printing, I have them here, sir."

Ears pricked and heads rose from their individual responsibilities, the Naval Ball was one of the barometers for individual career advancement. An invitation meant that you were being considered for staff level positions or promotion. Receiving an invitation at all was an indicator that MCS believed the individual had a promising career ahead of them. Some officers never received an invitation, for the vast majority of commissioned officers they could expect to only be graced with a single invitation throughout their career. There were numerous smaller galas and socials held by MCS, usually at the fleet level, but the Naval Ball was for the best and brightest. A printer was kept on each ship to produce the invitations for such formal gatherings, with the Naval ball the text was metallic silver on an eggshell colored stock. If the text was printed in metallic Gold it indicated an imminent promotion.

Archer accepted the invitations from the Chief and began thumbing through them. There were seventeen total for the _Enterprise_ which was a relatively unprecedented number. He noted his, Hernandez's, and Reed's invitations all in the traditional silver ink and paused at the gilt letters of the following invitation, pulling it out of the stack.

"Miss Sato..." Archer lilted.

"Sir?" His communications/electronic warfare officer chirped.

"Looks like you're going to be lieutenant Sato soon." Archer grinned.

To her credit Hoshi didn't squeal, but her voice showed her intense pleasure at the announcement. "Thank you, sir."

"Congrats, Hoshi." Mayweather declared, a big smile on his face.

Archer went back to thumbing through the invitations; Mayweather, Kelby, Clarke, DiTomaso, most of his senior officers, then another edge of Gold lettering caught his eye, lifting it out of the stack his stomach lurched. The text seemed to stare back at him sullenly, defying him to try to deny what he was seeing; _**Charles Anthony Tucker III**_.

He put it back into the stack and continued thumbing through, looking for another set of gold letters so he could ask the question that was even now chewing at him. The gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach made him feel physically ill, he wasn't sure why, it wasn't jealousy or indignation, just a sudden sense of uncertainty and maybe even a little fear. What did it all mean? Could it be they would be pulling him from _Enterprise_ and not Trip? Were they going to have Trip another boat and pulling him off _Enterprise_ in the first place was just to placate what MCS viewed to be an intractable commanding officer? He almost felt dizzy, head swimming and he felt a tightness in his throat.

"XO, could you come speak with me in my office, please." Archer croaked quietly.

"Aye, sir." Erika replied crisply. "Lieutenant Commander Reed, you have the conn."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Reed stepped away from the tactical station and made his way to the command couch.

Archer stepped into the ready room and moved to behind his desk, looking out the plate sized porthole. Hernandez stepped into the room a moment later, when the door closed she leaned back against the wall, arms crossed.

"What's this about, Jon?"

Archer pulled out the invitation and tossed it onto the desk. The raven haired XO looked down at the desk, not even seeing the name, just the gold lettering and dropped her arms to her side, "We knew this would happen eventually, but just think of it this way, that means Admiral is in the pipeline for you soon."

"It's not yours...look at it closely." Archer replied in a quiet voice.

Hernandez stepped closer, leaning in to look at the named on the invitation prompting an immediate huffing voice, "Well, how about that..."

"What do you think it means?" Archer said quietly.

"I'd guess this means they're going to end up sticking him on a Frigate doing Sol security patrols, it'll keep him close enough to Earth that he can be home a few days every month." Erika shrugged.

"He's been receiving alpha three level priority messages from Admiral Black for the last six weeks." Archer turned to look at his XO, "I don't even have alpha three clearance."

Erika folder her arms back across her chest, looking down at the desk, chewing on her lower lip as she tried to divine some sort of meaning behind it all. Alpha tree clearance, a promotion, the extent to which MCS was willing to go to let Tucker transfer off _Enterprise_ when they could just as easily say "deal with it" and leave him to either accept his posting or resign. She didn't feel any particular animus towards Trip at all, his subtle anger with the captain was in many ways understandable as was his willingness to sacrifice his career for a family. As long as she had known Jon she was fully aware he could be a complete child when things didn't go the way wanted as it pertained to his ship and crew.

"You know," She began, "every time something happens with Tucker that throws you, you always retreat to this room."

Archer turned around, a frown on his face, "What are you trying to imply?"

"Stop running from it, Jon. Just stop running away scared every time Trip does something that doesn't fit into your visions of him. I don't know if you always saw him as a little brother or a son or what, but he's not that Florida kid in the ridiculous swim trunks with the spear gun anymore. He's a man, you've watched him become one. He didn't screw T'Pol in the back of his car after prom, he go his _wife_ pregnant because they wanted to start a family together. He didn't take over the football team and then tell you to stop telling him how to run his team, he led hundreds of men in battle against an overwhelming enemy force. No matter how much you want him to stay that fifteen year old kid, he has proved to the world he's not." She half scolded, half consoled. She often had to take this role; Jonathan Archer was one of the coolest heads in a crisis one could imagine, his capacity for diplomacy set the standard for MCS, but when it came to interpersonal relationships he really was still a little boy. "You have to accept the fact he is _never_ going to be that kid again, take pride in the direction you did give him, accept the fact that if we've done our jobs our protégés will always be greater than we are."

"Dammit, you're right..." He gave her a rueful look, "as usual. It's just...I look at him sometimes and I still see that kid. He'll grin or start using his hands when he's talking and I swear, its like I'm right back there at Cocoa Beach again talking to that crazy kid about warp theory and the obsolescence curve of the research and development model."

"Jon, you know he's not that person anymore, he's been through three major conflicts now, he's madly in love with the woman of his dreams and he's got a child on the way." She approached, entering his personal space and placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Hell of a habit to break..."

"If you can do it, you might be able to stop acting like you're still twenty four." She quipped with a smirk, her left brow arched and head bobbing in a snide nod.

He gave his XO a testing look, "I had a lot more energy when I was twenty four."

She raised an admonishing finger, "Oh no you don't...I'm not getting transferred off, and if you were ready to bust Trip and T'Pol over breaking regs I sure as hell am not going to let you get away with it."

Archer sighed in faux defeated exasperation, "We'll just have to wait until you get one of these," He stated flicking the invitation with his index finger.

"Then you better start creating situations that'll buck me for a promotion."

* * *

><p>Trip made he was down the length of the corridor on E-Deck heading for his quarters, taking a long moment to remember the events of the last five years living on the ship. He'd seen them at their best and their worst. He could, with just his own two eyes, pick out every wound the ship had suffered over those five years. He remembered the heady days of new star ship smell, when everything was brand new and smelled of industrial chemical compounds and just a general newness. He'd seen this very corridor barely lit with panels ripped open by EPS explosions, beams hanging across the corridor like great tree branches hanging low in a thicket as if it was something out of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow or some Gothic tale. The ship smelled lived in now, dozens of lives taking their course up and down this and the other corridors of the ship. In this moment he felt a pronounced sense of melancholy, it was like he was leaving home knowing he would never return. All the joys, all the pains, each and every sensation he had experienced while serving on <em>Enterprise<em> coming back in a glut of nostalgia fueled sadness.

In all likelihood he would never cross these hallowed halls again, and he ached in his very soul knowing that he wasn't just living a ship and a crew, but a part of his life. The pain of a child moving away, walking through the empty house one last time knowing that all the feelings and friends bound to a geographic locale would be somehow lost. You could never truly go back, even if you kept in touch, you would become an outsider and that special intimacy created in youthful friendship would be lost forever as years rolled by, changing who you were and the people you had once known.

Today, he had to remain strong though, all the events of the years now had led him to this point. A new life, a new path, was laying out before both he and his wife, his T'Pol. An unexplored area, an unknown region of space, a road that ran up a hill and obscured what lay beyond promising both pains and joys and events that would come to further define him lay just over the rise, just around the bend, just one more mile along. Road signs and maps, adventures and disappointments; life..._life_! He realized that on top of it all he was more than a little scared too. The unknown lay before them when he still felt a strange safety here. All he could do now was to take T'Pol's hand, literally, figuratively, whatever, and head down this new road.

He had resolved to make the cut clean, a swift stroke that would not leave time for any pain. Over the last three days he had very quietly moved their personal possession out of their quarters and off the ship to be delivered to the house MCS had acquired in their stead to act as their quarters. Nine years worth of largely banking his pay had left him with a substantial nest-egg and he had tapped deeply into it to find the perfect house for he and his soon-to-be family. The ship itself was still set to MCS Zulu time which had migrated far from Greenwich, England to San Francisco to fit more uniformly with MCS command. As it was, the time was 0328 as far as operations were concerned, it would be hours before the people that would make this separation the most painful would arise, making this the perfect time. He reached the door and entered before he could think about how the events of his life had changed so radically in this very room.

T'Pol lay curled slightly on the bed, her blue pajamas parting just enough to reveal the slight growth of her belly laden, as it was, with their child. He could almost swear that every time he looked at her he noticed something new about her, it was the sort of thing he would almost be too embarrassed to say out loud, it dropped of money pubescent love. But it was the truth, every day they allowed themselves to be open with each other they learned something new about one another. Most recently he discovered she would mock-wrestle with their sehlat cub. He had returned to their quarters for a quick change of clothes after having disassembled and done thorough maintenance on Ventral rail-gun battery four. His uniform had been covered in a fine layer of black friction soot and he had been forced to seek a replacement. Upon entering the room he had witnessed T'Pol tickling the cubs stomach babbling some nonsense speech in Vulcan, while it's little paws scrambled, trying to gain purchase against the air. When she had turned, she looked surprised, startled even, and she flushed a deep olive shade. She had attempted to explain away the behavior as seeking to ensure the cub was properly socialized with humanoids.

He had to resist the urge to lean in close and wake her with a kiss, it would be far to hokey, even for him. Today, more than any other day, he had to hold himself in check, they are so close, the end was in sight, just another hour or so and they would be free. He could be the husband he wanted to be, tender and loving, supportive of her internal struggle between emotion and logic. She could be the wife he felt that she wanted to be, comforting, steadfast, and mercurially passionate. He resolved himself to head to the washroom to shower before waking her when her eyes opened and she moved her head to look at him.

"K'diwa." She said softly in her sleep constricted voice, reaching a hand outward for him.

Trip stepped over to the bunk and knelt, twining his fingers with hers, and let her touch his mind. He felt her concern and her own sadness, but also a strange contentment that she would be with her mate without the need for appearances or subterfuge.

"You are troubled." She almost whispered.

"Its just a lil sadness, darlin'. We've leavin' a part of our lives behind today." He consoled her gently.

"I do not relish the thought of saying farewell to the crew, I have come to experience...fondness for many of them." Her reply was all Vulcan, but also very much what he would expect of his often strangely emotive T'Pol.

"That's why we're not goin' to, darlin'." Trip reached up and pushed an errant lock of hair from her forehead, "We're goin' to leave now, that's why we prepared the message."

"There are still some clothing and hygiene items that have not been suitable prepare for our departure." Her voice had returned to the analytical T'Pol he found at once annoying and adorable.

"Leave 'em, we'll get whatever we need once we're off the ship. Everything important is already waitin' for us, all we need to do is get ourselves out of here and to our new home."

"Trip, you have not slept in over forty hours, you require rest." She scolded.

He knew what he had to do, the same sort of misdirecting manipulation that always forced concession from her; it was a sneaky tactic on his part, but it worked because there was something inherently genuine in it. Closing his lips over hers he leaned in close, his right hand unlocking from hers and coming down to rest on her belly and, by extension, their child. He closed his eyes immediately, letting himself savor, for just a moment, the sensation of it. He hadn't allowed himself this kind of kiss since they returned from Vulcan, in the name of duty, propriety, and maintaining the illusion he had remained chaste not only in more public areas but in private as well. He let the feeling roll through him, through his mind and out into his body, down burning arms and aching fingers, tired legs and sore feet. Explosions in his brain, before his closed eyes, and a feeling of not just her resolve melting, but his as well.

When they finally parted she opened big brown eyes, pupils wide and her lower lip pouted slightly. "I will begin preparations, K'diwa."

"I love you darlin'." He said gently, bringing his hand up to run the back of his crooked index finger along the contour of her right ear.

Without further platitudes he stood and stepped towards the washroom. "I'm gonna grab a quick shower, I have our outfits in the closet."

"Our outfits?" T'Pol's brow climbed.

"Part of the adventure, darlin'." Trip grinned.

"Adventurism is illogical." She chided despite the amusement evident in her voice.

He leaned his head out of the door, giving her a long look with the grin still on his face, "...So?"

"Indeed." She watched as he ducked his head quickly back into the washroom and ran a hand over the growing overt sign of her pregnancy. Without concentrating she dipped into her body consciousness and felt the form of her offspring's semi-conscious mind. It was sleeping, content in the warmth and protection of its constricted home. One of the regular debates that she and Trip had engaged in of late was what, if any, middle name was appropriate for the child. He had made it very clear that it was going to be of paramount legal necessity that he be listed as Solan Tucker to ensure his citizenship status was unimpeachable. T'Pol had then suggested they give him the alternative of a human name he could vacillate between should he not choose to accept Vulcan identity. Trip had insisted that there was nothing wrong with Solan and that he would already have a human last name. The debate had continued on and off for the duration of the sortie to the Romulan border with neither reaching consensus on what course should be taken.

Bringing her other hand up she began caressing her stomach as if it were the child itself, the mutual telepathy of mother and child, so elemental and basic allowed her to touch his limited consciousness and vice versa. She felt nothing but a sort of ineffable and overwhelming joy, not sure if it was native to her or her son. In it there was an even greater sense of comfort and ease radiating from the tiny mind, "Ashau nash-veh, Solan-kam."

Opening the closet she spied the raiment for their surreptitious departure; his clothing consisted of a pair of gray denim slacks and a white button down shirt. For her he had set aside a red sundress and a white blouse, the color of the dress and the cut of the blouse reminding her instantly of the swim wear she had donned during their all-to-short stay in Florida. She promptly stripped off the pajamas and donning a pair of undergarments began to dress in the clothes provided. The fabric was pleasing, soft and light and the workmanship was clearly at a very high level. Thought not immediately visible, the weave had been done in such a away as to create a floral pattern within the fabric itself. She slipped it on, immediately appreciating that the cut of the garment gave her ample room to move given the recent changes to her body yet still was elegantly draped. When Trip emerged five minutes later clad in nothing but a towel she gave him a single long appraising look. She had been experiencing rather pronounced hormonal spikes of late and she was just about to voice her thought that perhaps their departure could be delayed another hour or two when he stepped in very close and whispered softly in her ear, "Once we're home, darlin'."

She arched her brows, "That is acceptable."

* * *

><p>Malcolm bolted upright, some sudden and great feeling of dread gnawing at him in the same way an oncoming head-ache pressed down on you, left you knowing with impending dread that it would be a bad one. Within seconds his eyes were focused, his mind clear, completely ready to focus on his suddenly apparent task; just one of the advantages of his augmentations. Like the Captain, executive officer, and many of the officers on <em>Enterprise<em> he was primarily a series 4, but he did have 19 percent series 5 genetic makeup which made him a cut above the average fours in terms of reflexes, strength, reaction time, and capacity for immediate situational awareness. Swinging his feet out of bed and placing them on the floor he began quickly mentally tabulating the best course of action, the apprehension was now manifesting itself as a kind of tingling sensation in his left big toe.

Reed bent forward, running a hand through his hair as a single involuntary yawn shook his body, the deep breath rushing oxygen into his blood stream and firing up the super-dense musculature on his relatively compact frame. One thing he had always been able to count on in the looks department was his physique. He was rarely the tallest guy in the room, as a matter of fact he was often enough the shortest, and he had always viewed his facial features to be an almost a farcically British caricature but if there was one thing that was certain, he was never ashamed to take off his shirt.

He hastily grabbed the first pair of sweats and an athletic shirt he saw, pulling them on before shoving his sockless feet into his running shoes and dashing out of his quarters. He hadn't travel more than ten meters before he spied Travis heading down the same hall.

"You too, huh?" Mayweather greeted.

"I know Trip, he'll try to slip away." Reed replied, "It's who he is, he hates goodbyes. Was the same thing on the Togo...didn't say a word to anyone, just got up early, hopped ship and that was the end of it."

"I think everyone was anticipating giving them a combination baby shower, going away party though. Was that why you told me not to get excited about it?" Travis inquired, both heading down the hallway toward T'Pol's quarters.

Malcolm nodded solemnly, he had absolutely no doubt that the engineer was planning it this time. Fives had a series of unconscious cues that were designed to allow large numbers of them to activate simultaneously, going on their natural combat instincts. Things like body movement, hormone cues, smells all allowed one five to know another five had been set off. Other augements typically referred to it as "going fivey" as it was almost a visible chain reaction as they all started to react to the cues and the modified low-expressing MAOA started working overtime. Fives themselves often called it the "madness network" and those more accustomed to its workings would often jokingly say something like "ping" when they felt their bodies switching over to battle mode. Travis was primarily an early generation system three, but he had about 24 percent system five in the mix on his mother's side of the family which caused him to react very strongly to stressors and the activation of other fives. The hierarchy of reaction had Tucker and the Marines go off first, Trip himself was 94 percent system five so he reacted very quickly and very visibly. Next Travis would start to go "fivey" which would in turn set, him off.

"What time is it, anyway?" Reed finally asked.

"Oh four twenty seven. Why?"

"We might still catch them. Last time he did this, he didn't get away until oh five twelve."

As they rounded the corner they spotted Hoshi standing outside her quarters, tiredly rubbing her eyes. She looked as worn out as they felt and made no compunction about letting the world see it. She took a few swaying steps then fell in behind them. Her voice was sleep muffled, having a somewhat nasally congested quality that was uncharacteristic for her. She was hardly awake at all at this point. "Slow down will ya, my head is falling off."

Both men slowed their pace slightly while Hoshi found her legs, and head. They were close enough now that if Trip and T'Pol left the quarters they would spot them. The last thirty meters, with each step, both Malcolm and Travis seemed to believe they would catch the two ducking out of the quarters to make a hasty get-away. At which point they were fully prepared to break into a run to intercept their colleagues that had managed to become their friends over the years. There was still a bit of denial occurring, that somehow at the last minute the whole transfer issue would be called off. T'Pol would be allowed to stay and have her baby on _Enterprise_, Trip would return to commanding Engineering and the Operations staff. Their baby would be born and grow up on the ship and they would all be the child's aunts and uncles and god-parents. It still seemed unreal, nobody had left the _Enterprise_ family since the commissioning. Some junior officers and enlisted had been transferred off, but the core staff, the faces you knew, the people whose lives had become a part of your own refused to leave the ship. It wasn't just the prestige of the posting, it was the fact that there was indeed something special about the relationship that developed between those that served together.

Their pace slowed more and more as they drew closer to the door, finally reaching it they stood, looking back and forth between each other as if unsure what to do. Hoshi made an exasperated sound and barreled between the two pressing the chime, cutting her eyes back with a scolding look, "Our pilot and armory officer being non-committal, how are we supposed to survive our next engagement?"

"This is different," Reed protested, "Trip and T'Pol..."

He never finished, the door had not opened, no words had been issued from inside. It was possible that they might be asleep, grabbing a few hours of rest before what promised to be an eventful day. They all shared looks, trying to determine what, if anything, the lack of response entailed. Expressions went from uncertain to almost hopeless, Reed knowing what to expect and Mayweather operating off Reed's previous experience. Hoshi furrowed her brows, nostril's flaring defiantly, she could read their faces and refused to believe their shared mien of defeat. She pressed the chime again defiantly and waited, her agitation showing. They stood silent for another three minutes, nothing happened, no word from inside, no opening door.

"They're gone." Reed said evenly, just a hint of dejection present.

"Maybe they're...you know." Travis' expression was sheepish.

Hoshi placed her ear to the door, sparking an immediate sound of protest from Malcolm which was quickly silenced by an admonishing finger. She furrowed her brows deeper, pressing her ear firmly to the door. She arched a brow, moving her head to gain better purchase with her ear, almost as if she head something, remaining that way for minutes that seemed to roll on forever. Finally she straightened and looked seriously at her two male colleagues.

"Nothing." She pronounced with deathly seriousness.

Reed rolled his eyes, keying the intercom on the door controls, "Reed to conn."

"This is the conn." Came the reply through the tiny speaker.

"Status on persons Tucker, Charles A., and T'Pol?" Reed inquired.

"Negative status, sir. Persons not present aboard. Should I query Lagrange two, sir?"

Malcolm shook his head, "Is there a transport log?"

"Wait one, checking, sir."

The Briton looked up at the taller Mayweather and plucky Sato, a subtle kind of sorrow written on every inch of his face. He hadn't even been able to say goodbye and chances were he wouldn't get too until very long ex post facto.

"Sir, persons beamed down to Marine Air Station Beaufort at zero four oh nine on flag authorization."

"Bloody hell, bugger it all." Malcolm slammed his fist into the wall, the plating groaning in protest at the strength of the blow.

"Sir, there is a message addressed to Reed, M J, Mayweather T R, and Sato, H that you can access from the console in the room." The officer of the watch intoned plainly.

Malcolm was still preoccupied by disappointment and anger, prompting Travis to speak up, "Roger that, are the quarters currently accessible?"

"Affirmative. Is there anything further?"

"Negative. Nothing at this time." Hoshi replied as Travis put a reassuring hand on Malcolm's shoulder.

"Roger that, conn out." With that the communications cut.

Reed was pacing back and forth the width of the corridor, his agitation plain to see. "That's the second time he's done this to me. Lighting out in the dead of night without so much as a good luck and a half-way decent insult."

Hoshi opened the door and ushered the two men inside, the room seemed empty, dead, sterile, except for the subtle smells of T'Pol's candles and the soap smell still wafting from the washroom, and the odd scent their little saber toothed creature had created, not unpleasant in its own right but defying proper categorization and description. Malcolm stood in the middle of the room, wondering what his friend's life had been like in the room, having to work hard to remind himself that he wasn't dead, just gone. Somehow it seemed like a member of the family had died, it would be years before he would ever get to see him again, if at all. Despite the ease of transportation, the fact that Earth had become such a smaller place with nobody more than two or three hours away from anyone else, it became uniquely complicated for two people at actually manage to link up in this day and age.

"Alright you three," Trip's tone was almost chiding, Reed spun almost expecting to see the engineer standing in the door, instead he saw his friend's face on the viewscreen of the desk console, "What to say, what to say. I had rehearsed all this a hundred time in my mind. It's never quite as easy when you start actually sayin' it all. Well, first off, thanks for lookin' after T'Pol when I was on Vulcan, that really means a lot to me. It was hard as hell takin' off like that, then when she told me she was pregnant...if it hadn't been for you guys I'd've probably been so distracted from worryin' that we wouldn't be able to have this conversation now." He leaned back a bit, "Well, we're gone now if you're seein' this. I can't talk about my next post, highly classified and all that." He paused as T'Pol crossed into the camera field, "Right, but enough about all that, I know what y'all have been wonderin' about all this time, and without further a-do the part y'all have been waitin' for. It's a..." He lifted a printout of a high resolution scan of the baby in T'Pol's womb, "a boy! We've already decided on a name, Solan Tucker, sorry Malcolm, Travis, should be joinin' the family in mid April." He held the scan up in front of the camera, showing the scan render of the little being, arms and legs drawn up close to its body and a tell-tale bulge on the pelvis. The tiny face seemed serene, lips in a soft line while the eyelids seemed to be softly closed, as if sleeping. The little point on each of the two tiny ears very clear.

Hoshi took a sobbing breath, "He's a little angel."

Travis was grinning ear to ear, "Way to go, sexual vanilla."

"Anyway, we...T'Pol and I, we just want you to know," He lowered his head a little, looking away from the camera, "we both love y'all, you've been more than friends to us, you've been family. So this isn't goodbye...goodbye is a four letter word...followed a three letter word, but it's still a four letter word. Lets just call this until next time...which has two four letter words...dammit, I'm babblin'."

T'Pol's face abruptly appeared on the view screen, "I believe what my husband wishes to indicate is that 'our paths shall assuredly cross again'." She lifted her head away and spoke, "There, k'diwa, no four letter words." Then she did what they never thought they would witness, she stroked the back of his neck gently.

Trip smiled at the camera, his face sublime with a slight smile, "Yeah, what she said. So long for now."

With that the screen went blank, the room once again darkened, the three compatriots standing there taking it all in and beginning, each in their own way, to process it all.

"I've heard her call him that before," Malcolm commented, "what does it mean?" He looked over at Hoshi who was getting misty eyed in spite of herself.

"Its from an ancient Vulcan dialect and translates best to 'beloved'."

Travis was still smiling, forever the optimist, forever finding joy in the joy of others, "Man, they really are happy. I mean, when all those rumors were going around the ship about how T'Pol got pregnant, it sort of had to make you wonder just a bit."

Hoshi shook her head, "I didn't buy those stories for a second, you could look at T'Pol and know..."

Malcolm cocked a brow, a smirk slowly sneaking onto his face, "Oh, really? Know what?"

"Don't make me spell it out..." Hoshi half protested, half scolded.

Malcolm felt some strange sense of catharsis, sort of like the covert exit hadn't occurred at all. The farewell message certainly lacked what a face to fact encounter would, but the fact that Trip and T'Pol had decided to single the three of them out, compose a private message for them felt special somehow. It was recognition, de facto or otherwise, that a special relationship had formed between the five of them over the years. Of course, it T'pol and Trip's case it was a _very_ special relationship codified by little Solan Tucker currently nestled in his mother's womb. They all three stood silent, exchanging looks, smiles either forming or already formed and a strange feeling of liberation lifting them out of the pit of gloom in which they descended.

"Well, who's hungry? I'm feeling a bit peckish." Malcolm chirped.

"Breakfast sounds good, we can start breaking the news about little baby Solan to the rest of the crew." Hoshi replied, the idea of telling everyone somehow appealing and hoping beyond hope that she would get to hold the baby at some point.

"One of us is going to have to tell the captain, soon too." Travis commented, his smile diminishing a little.

"Not it!" Hoshi called out immediately.

"That's not very bloody-"

"Not it..." She reiterated.

"I'll do it." Mayweather volunteered. "Lets all go ahead and get ready for our shift, I'll tell the captain as soon as he comes into the mess."

"Thanks Travis." Reed said softly, smiling to the pilot.

"Hey its no big deal, beside, you two will owe me one," He laughed and made for the door.

"And here I assumed you were just being nice." Malcolm half protested.

"Don't ever _ass-_sume anything, lieutenant commander." Hoshi jibed as the two followed Mayweather out of the door and down the corridor.

* * *

><p>T'Pol sat with her eyes closed, feeling the unusually warm January winds whipping around her as they traveled along a shaded stretch of US 1 south in the unconventional opening top ground car that Trip had waiting for him at the Beaufort Air Station. He had said very little since beaming down. When he had declared their destination was Florida she almost assumed they were going to see his parents and perhaps the relative inefficiency of ground conveyance was to allow preparation time for their arrival. Something about the trip was soothing though, seeing the trees and foliage that still clung to verdant shades during this abnormally temperate winter. The sun coming from the east was frequently filtered by tall old-growth pine and oaks letting the light danced across her in a strobing effect.<p>

At points they passed small towns lying just off interstate 95 which had served as the main roadway by which they had traveled from South Carolina down through Georgia and into Florida. These places seemed untouched by time, inured to the twenty second century and all it entailed. She reflected on how strangely dynamic Earth was, among many cultures population had hyper-concentrated to urban centers, illogically so in some situations. On Vulcan cities tended to grow where aquifers provided a supply of fresh water to sustain life, it was logical that people would remain close to these water sources rather than create elaborate and expensive infrastructure to move water great distances to outlying regions. Still, on many other worlds where natural resources were in place to support life and fast and reliable transportations allowed access to urban and government centers, beings still flocked to every growing urban sprawls leaving a country side that was pristine, but also utterly alien to most of the sentient beings indigenous to the planet in question.

Earth still clung to the small towns, rural communities, and suburban low-rise as if there existed a distinct stratification of culture. It was not imposed, it was voluntary, and while many of Earth's more urbane and sophisticated elements referred to those who eschewed the concrete forests as bumpkins, rednecks, or primitives, there existed a strangely calm demeanor among these people who were not quick to accept, but once they did so, did so unconditionally.

T'Pol breathed in the various scents and the unsullied air greedily as she felt the strange contentment spreading through her body. Her own satisfaction spreading to her unborn child which, in turn, radiated a calmness back to her. Only in her mate did she find hesitation, concern, even a little fear. His uncertainty rooted in concern over whether he was making the right decisions, if by some oversight he was dooming their life together. He was unsure if his decision to accept the posting offered by Admiral Black was the right choice for _her_. All of his mental anguish revolved around her and what he could do to keep her content. She found that it hurt to consider, a deep ache that caused not only her physical discomfort but that was also affecting their child. They had just entered Florida when she reached over and placed a hand on his right thigh, stroking gently, a simple gesture but one that was vitally essential to his mental health. He immediately understood that he was projecting and took all the dark feelings and shoved them away in the dark area she had learned to avoid. He took her left hand in his right, lifting it to his lips and kissed the back of it before lowering it again, still keeping his fingers twined with hers. The feelings of love, adoration, and comfort spread out from him and into her, rekindling her own feelings of contentment and she drifted softly into a comforted sleep.

He had awoken just minutes ago as they skirted along the edges of the Indian river to their east, the speeds reduced as she felt growing anticipation in her mate. He spoke, softly, just barely audible. "We're almost home, darlin'."

Home...their home, a true home beyond shared quarters where they were forced to be different people on the other side of a door. Home, a place that was their household where she would be matriarch as her mother ruled over the family holding outside Shi'kahr. Home, a place where she could love him and be loved by him without restriction and where their child could know an affection that was Vulcan and Human, complete in each but tempered by neither. Off across the river lay a strip of land and then a wide sea...and there at their own little end of the world they would be insulated from eyes that sought to judge or quantify. He turned off US 1 and onto the leaf shaped exit ramp leading onto the Pineda Causeway following it across the Indian river to an impossibly narrow and defiant strip of land that seperated the two bodies of water arbitrarily making one the Indian and one the Banana, and finally onto another strip of land hailed by a sign as Satellite Beach.

"A hurricane in twenty fifty four wiped out almost all of Satellite beach, used to be houses as far as the eye could see." Trip explained, his voice tinged with something almost melancholic. No doubt thinking about the devastation wrought near the home of his parents by the Xindi weapon over a year ago.

He turned off the Causeway onto a street titled Melaleuca drive and continued down a little over three hundred meters to turn left onto a road named Ocean boulevard, following its even path until he once again took a left onto Flamingo drive. Off before them, about one hundred fifty meters distance lay a single raised bungalow amidst the palms and beach grass. The next closest house was easily a quarter mile away, and off to her right T'Pol could see the ocean. A surge of joy that she couldn't quite understand raced through her as she realized almost immediately that this was to be their home. Moments later he turned into the driveway and pulling up into the paved circle situation in front of the front porch stopped the vehicle, putting it in park and turning off the engine. In the back seat the sehlat in his pet carrier made a mewling sound.

He opened his door, walking around the front of the vehicle and over to the passenger side door, opening it and extending a hand.

"We're home, darlin'...our home."


	27. Chapter 27

T'Pol tried to calm herself knowing that it wasn't real; the sound of weapon's fire, the shouts and swearing, the odors of spent propellant, sweat, and blood. That close strangely sour artificial smell of military issue, pricked at her nostrils. She had smelled it many times before, but it seemed soaked this time with the odors of living in tight quarters without climate control or adequate bathing facilities. Residual odors of sweat, urine, and food seemed to cling to and underpin the stench of the gear mixed with the musty dirt smell of whatever world they were on and combined created an odor she could only describe as the essence of fear. A few dozen humans in MCUU were standing or crouched behind sand-bagged fighting positions, the tan color of their body armor and helmets easily distinguishing them from the single human still clad in black vest and helm. She knew it was Trip immediately as he held a hand receiver to his ear. He was having the nightmare again, this was the fourth time in the last two weeks. The three times before she had managed to wake herself, some strange and irrational fear forcing her to seek to escape the dream but this time there was a strange compulsion, a need to see what he had experienced, what caused him to remain asleep to go through it again and again while he lay softly muttering while a violent hyper-awareness seized his entire body. The temptation to touch him to try to rouse him had been immediately quelled as she knew he would construe the touch as an attack and react accordingly. On the previous three nights she had eventually roused him by saying his name in his ear until it snatched him from whatever battlefield he was on, the sour and painful emotions seeping into her through his unconscious bond. She walked slowly across his mental construct, it clearly had elements of Vulcan apparent in the landscape and the sensation of heat and lack of humidity, but the specific terrain itself was unrecognizable. They were on a raised knoll ringed with trenches and bunkers, sand-bags piled high all around with a mortar pit in the middle of the seventy five by seventy five meter wide defensive position. There was a degree of obliviousness to her presence that seemed to be evident by the fact that nothing was happening around her, all the activity was concentrated in the area where Trip was. In order to understand the pathology of these nightmares she would have to experience or, at least, witness the things he still hid from her as he experienced them in his mind and as his mind remembered it.

"Overrun!" She turned to see a Marine running past her, looking right at her. It was clearly a disjointed mental construct, the equipment and clothing of a Marine expeditionary force member, the rank insignia indicating he was a lance corporal, but the face was that of Boatswain's Mate Masaro. His mental construct most have sensed she was a sentient element and began treating her as if she was the one experiencing the dream. More Marines flooded past her and she heard the hiss of disruptor bolts flying wide of the position of the perimeter that was being attacked. She reminded herself once again that it was a dream, all of this was a construct of Trip's memories and there was no actual danger from the weapons fire. There was still a commonly held misbelief among humans that if one were to die in a dream it would result in their brain shutting down and cause actual death. In reality the process of "dying" in a dream was just the reversion of REM to waking state. One would always awaken before dying in a dream due to the fact that the brain lacked further information to formulate an assumption about what the process of dying entailed. But there was still something disconcerting about being privy to the combat. As she drew closer she heard him speaking into the handset.

"Thunder lizard, thunder lizard, this is long bow actual we have at least five zero movers two one zero yards west, south-west of friendly position, require close air support, all available ordnance west, south-west of our perimeter, danger close, how copy?"

The reply was somehow audible to her even though it was meant for his portion of the dream construct, "Long bow this is Thunder Lizard two one, negative on close air support, we are winchester, remaining on station to direct additional air assets. Over."

"Thunder lizard, interrogative, ETA on additional air assets? Over."

"Long bow, air ETA two five mikes. How copy?"

"Sonuva..." Trip lowered the receiver a moment, then lifted it back to his ear, "Solid copy, long bow out."

He handed the receiver back to the radio operator and grumbled to himself, "We'll be overrun by then. Sergeant Giap, how many have we got out there?"

"No idea, I can make out at least niner five movers, sir."

"Damn, if there's that many there's bound't be more of 'em." Trip turned to look over to the mortar pit, "Get the eight ones goin' I want rounds out two minutes ago. Alternate HE air burst, HE quick. They'll fall back to that berm, then walk fire along that line, oorah?"

"Aye aye, sir." The sergeant replied, rising from his position and jogging over to another group of Marines.

T'Pol wasn't entirely sure but for some reason Trip and the rest of the Marines seemed huge, insanely large, her head only coming up to slightly above their waist. She wanted to observe what was occurring, thinking that if she walked amidst them she would be somehow unnoticed, this was Trip's dream, after all. Her presence should be overlooked, disregarded. As she stepped closer an approaching Corporal caught Trip's attention.

"Sir."

Trip turned to look at the Corporal who gestured in her direction with his head. His expression was aghast, he looked so much younger, a residual self-image of how he had appeared in his mid twenties, so this must be a dream about the 47 war, but there were clearly elements of the Battle of Shi'khar worked into it.

"Jesus Christ, how did a kid get in here!" He stepped over to her, kneeling down, "Hey lil darlin', what are you doin' here? This is a bad place."

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words she had consciously selected didn't come forth, "I'm lost." She recoiled mentally as she heard her voice revert to something she couldn't recognize, it wasn't her voice, but it was, some foggy memory of being seven years old came back to her and she was momentarily horrified to realize that in this dream she was a child.

"Somebody get this kid back to the CP...damnit..." Trip bellowed over his shoulder, but nobody seemed to react, "Alright, com'mon we're gonna get you some place safe."

She reached up and put arms around his neck as he hooked his left arm around her and lifted her from the ground effortlessly, his right hand coming in to secure the assault rifle hanging from a sling across his chest and push it to the side under his right arm. He began walking quickly towards the sandbagged structure that served as the FOB command post his combat gear clapping against his fatigues as he quickly covered the distance.

"How'd you get out here anyway? Closest settlement is about four klicks away."

"I am not certain." She replied in the child-voice.

He turned his head, seeming to notice her facial features for the first time, "Are you a Vulcan, lil' darlin'?"

"I am."

"I didn' realize there were any Vulcans on the planet. Are your mom'n pop at the settlement?"

"I am not certain."

"Alright then, we'll just get you hunkered down in the CP till the baddies are gone, then we'll find your mom and dad, okay, sweetie?" His words were meant to sound reassuring but there were obvious elements of concern carrying through. "You can call me Trip, I'm the commandin' officer here. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"T'Pol."

He stopped dead in his tracks, some element of his psyche seizing on the new information and began assimilating and organizing its ramifications, what effect it had on the immediate circumstances. The world around them stopped dead, sounds ending, movement ceasing as the mental constructs were processed in turn and determined to be memory elements by the conscious part of his mind. The dream process began to collapse as color and light went out of the sky. He began muttering to himself, "It's just a dream. Just a dream."

She wasn't even aware of the consciousness process that had changed her from the child form to that of her current physical form nestled into his left side as they remained in an upright position despite the fact that their body consciousness registered that they were actually lying in a bed.

"It is a dream, k'diwa."

The world dissolved into nothingness as he awoke and she along with him. Her eyes opened to the darkness of their bedroom and for a moment she had to remember that they were still in their house on Satellite Beach and not on _Enterprise_. Sounds manifested a moment later and she could hear the surf softly rolling in the distance. Their bungalow, their refuge, had proven to be nothing of the sort. Trip had been busy every day since their initial moving in and there was a measured degree of scrutiny they had not realized existed. Within days of the award ceremony at Camp Kelly five months prior, news footage had reached earth and began playing in media circulation. At first the focus had remained entirely on the ceremony itself and Tucker's status as hero of Shi'khar. It wasn't until some weeks later that a Vulcan academic working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had seen the footage that questions had begun to be asked. The professor, a quantum mechanics expert named V'sek had noted to his colleagues that the Vulcan woman pinning the medals was in a bridal gown.

T'Pol internally damned her oversight, failing to consider that someone outside Vulcan would recognize the implied meaning behind her act of pride. In the company of other Vulcans V'sek would have likely never mentioned it, but among humans there would be questions. Within days the media was reanalyzing the footage, the networks treated it as a follow-up, mentioning that the woman was actually sub-commander T'Pol, the cultural attaché of _Enterprise_. Vulcan cultural experts noted that she was in Vulcan bridal regalia while pinning the medals. Other so-called experts noted and emphasized any change in her posture or complexion during the ceremony. Questions were asked, speculation grew, and the follow-up story took on a life of its own as analysts asked why a Vulcan woman would present awards to a human officer while wearing a bridal gown. What did it imply? What did it mean? Questions, so many questions being asked and nobody willing to answer. She wasn't sure if it was making the issue better or worse.

MCS had no official line in that regard when questioned, stating that they had no record of any questionable relationship between Commander Charles A. Tucker III and Sub-commander T'Pol of Vulcan. And, indeed, they did not, nothing regarding their relationship was on the record in any form and Admiral Black had gone through great pains to ensure every possible avenue of questioning was stone-walled from Tucker's current post to the current duty status of T'Pol as diplomatic personnel. Still, it meant that their home, where they had believed they could be free of prying eyes, was a new prison for them.

Two months since they left _Enterprise_ and in that time T'Pol had found herself virtually cloistered. Trip had thrown himself into the work pertaining to Dark Water and put in long hours pouring over designs and concerns about whatever the project entailed. He mentioned little of it, but T'Pol knew it had something to do with ship design. She had never attempted to pry but had seen where he had left PADDs and various other display devices. His math was indicating an engine and power plant three times the size of that on the current CG series cruisers. He was distracted and increasingly sullen, often managing only about three hours of sleep a night and spending those fitfully or in nightmares. In one of his moments of more manic enthusiasm he had mentioned that the design spec he was developing should be able to sustain warp 8.1 with ease with a maximum speed of just around 8.6. Those moments were few and far between though, as he tended to brood quietly, his face wearing signs of exhaustion and pronounced fatigue. His desire for affection had also plummeted, and T'Pol had begun to feel strange twinges of dread that he no longer found her attractive or desirable as a mate, her advanced pregnancy non-withstanding.

It wasn't until she spoke to her mother about her concerns while Trip was away for the night inspecting a production facility in Baruun Urt a few weeks prior that she finally began to understand why. It had been a telling conversation.

"I note that you still seem remarkably energetic, daughter." Her mother stated with an arched brow.

"Why would I be otherwise? All indications are that I am very healthy." She had been curious as to why the matter was being brought up.

"You are seeing a Vulcan physician, correct?"

"Yes, doctor Kovel has been most agreeable."

"And he has not spoken to you about the common issues facing a pregnant Vulcan female?" T'Les' reaction could have been construed as either alarm or fascination.

"No, mother, he has not mentioned anything of the sort."

"T'Pol..." She paused as if trying decide how to best word what she had said, "Many Vulcan females have remarkably complicated pregnancies. We tend to become reserved, introverted, and excessively emotive, usually manifesting in anger or sullenness. The fatigue and the emotional stressors account for the abnormally high number of Vulcan females who die either during or immediately following child birth."

T'Pol remembered the feeling of her eyes widening as it all suddenly made sense, "Trip..."

"Is something wrong with your sa-telsu?"

"He has been exhibiting those traits of late, but I have not experienced any of those side effects. Is it possible that he is unconsciously processing these stressors in my stead?"

"Or perhaps he is doing so consciously." T'Les stated evenly, then with a glint in her eye had said, "You have a remarkable husband."

It was true, a week after moving in the first waves of symptoms had hit, without his constantly close presence to help process the emotions and fatigue she had grown intractable and grouchy. When Trip had noticed it he began to mentally intrude into her mind, constantly providing a subtly soothing presence that within days had erased all of the mental stressors. He was processing not only his own stress, but hers as well. He never complained, never accused or recriminated, he just endured it on his own and while his personality showed a marked shift, he was still her Trip and when she poked in past his barriers she could feel his affection.

As if there was some strange collective unconscious that linked the extended elements of the human/Vulcan family, his parents had spontaneously arrived under the pretense of assisting their pregnant daughter-in-law. In point of fact they had been back on Earth for over a week before Trip seemed to suddenly remember his duty as a son to inform his parents that they would be, again, becoming Grandparents, this time to the first half human child on record. Their arrival had served to alleviate some of the growing concern she sensed in him, concern over her well being in what was, admittedly, a very alien environment for a Vulcan, further compounded by its removal from others of her kind and the necessity-imposed isolation from the rest of the world around them.

"How many times have you been in that dream?" Trip finally asked.

T'Pol reach up to brush a stray strand of his short hair off his forehead, "I have been aware of it on four previous occasions, this was the first time I was integrated into it."

"That was the day I got this," he rubbed his thumb over the edge of the scar on his right side the wrapped around to his back. "It was a bad overrun."

"You relive the event exactly as it occurred?"

"It's how fives process it all. We don't have the same kind of breakdown with post-traumatic stress as the other types. We just get to keep livin' it over and over again. It's by design, helps us further process events so we instinctively react more proficiently the next time 'round." The melancholy in his voice was readily apparent to T'Pol.

"Have you had any dreams about Shi'khar, k'diwa?"

He shook his head slowly, deliberately. "I think I must'a buried all that too deep."

She didn't press the matter, it was quite clear that it was still far to raw for him. In the months since the battle footage and still images had finally made their way into public dissemination and she had seen some of it. Based on those images she found she was grateful to have not been subjected to his recollections of the action.

"Wonder what time it is."

"Zero four thirty." T'Pol replied softly.

"Really?"

"An educated guess."

"Guess I better get up'n at'um then." He replied with a tired sigh.

"Why?"

"Huh?" He turned his head to look over to his wife he was now propped up on an elbow. "What'dya mean why?"

"It is Sunday, you do not have to report for duty today, why not just relax? You have been overworking yourself."

"Darlin', I..."

"I do not wish to hear any contradictory assertion on your part, you will say, 'Yes, you are correct, I will not exert myself today' and remain in bed until at least zero six thirty."

Trip let out a half-chuckle, "First of all, I don't think I'd ever say it quite like that. Second, this thing I'm workin' on ain't gonna design itself."

"It was my understanding the power plant and engine design had been completed." She countered deftly.

"Well, there's still the rest of the boat to design."

"Are there not other designers to undertake that responsibility?"

Trip grimaced, "Yeah, but it was pretty much agreed upon that we didn't want to be refittin' the thing six months outta dock. The idea is we get as much of it right as we can before we even take it out for the shake-down."

"And the problem is?" She cocked an amused brow, expecting that his meticulous nature in terms of all things engineering was coming to the fore.

"This power plant is going to be running about twice the energy through the system as the reactors on the CG series. Now I could whip up a set'a specs for an EPS grid that could handle it all, but we'd have to fabricate somethin' new from scratch, create installation, repair, and replacement protocols, train new crews on it, and build a completely new tool kit. A new EPS grid means another layer of complication for the department of the quartermaster, supply, and purchasin'. So, in short, we gotta figure out a way to utilize those God awful HDEPTS numbers to do the same job since they're already goin' to be kickin' the CGs and DDs over to those."

T'Pol allowed her fingers to trace across Trip's left shoulder, "I am certain that there are other designers that will be up to the task."

"And that'll get it done right on the first attempt?" He arched a cynical brow.

"I will concede the point." T'Pol replied with Vulcan amusement. "But I will say that you have betrayed that the project on which you are working will require and EPS system."

Trip half-sneered, "If I had been workin' on something with a power plant that didn't have an EPS gid it would have been more tellin' than me just confirmin' that it does have one."

"You are not going to reveal any details, are you?"

"Why do you want to know so bad? Isn't tryin' to pry illogical?"

"I suppose I should inform the high command my attempts at spying are futile then, I will invariably be recalled." She replied flatly, prompting an expression that was a mixture of surprise, concern, and betrayal from her husband.

"You were..." It took him a moment to detect the spark of mirth in her mind. "How long were you praticin' to use that one?"

"Approximately forty seven days, did it work?"

He grinned sheepishly, "You had me goin' for a second there, but I suppose the bond kind of ruins any chance of a good poker face, darlin'."

"It would be logical to assume that part of my curiosity is an outgrowth of your involvement with the project. You must also admit the fact that you were selected without the normal vetting process and given project lead at what is, admittedly, a young age for a design and implementation lead is unusual." She commented.

Trip sighed, "It's an unusual project, darlin'." He sat upright in the bed, swinging his legs over the side. "Alright, get up, let's go to the office, and I'll show you what I'm workin' on."

"Is that permissible?" T'Pol's eyes widened.

"I'm not gonna be showin' you anything too specific or terribly classified. Just a lil' idea of what the project is."

T'Pol moved to rise and stopped abruptly, her handing shooting to her child-swelled belly, her eyes going wide suddenly. Trip turned, sensing her sudden alarm at what she had just felt, concern beginning to paint his face in tune with his mate's surprise.

"What is it, what's wrong?"

T'Pol's reply came slightly breathless, "I believe our child is agitated."

"What d'ya mean?" He furrowed his brow in response.

"He just kicked me." She paused before qualifying her statement, "Unborn Vulcan's do not kick."

Trip couldn't help but start grinning, "Human kids do."

He crossed over to her side of the bed, placing a hand on her rounded stomach and bending over talking softly towards the child contained there-in. "Take it down a notch, tiger. Momma ain't ready for you to be gettin' too boisterous yet."

"I think he misses his father's presence and is affecting your state of agitation, k'diwa."

There was a speck of truth to it. Trip had been aloof as of late, Solan had seemed the most at ease in the days immediately leading up to their departure from _Enterprise_ and the first few days after moving into the house on Satellite Beach when his mother and father were close to one another and allowing each other more access to each other through the bond. In the past week Trip had been putting in longer hours and staying away from home more just as the constant and, sometimes, intrusive presence of his parents had become a component of the home environment. Elaine was doting, trying to ensure T'Pol didn't strain herself, assuming that she was fragile and weakened in her current state. In point of fact T'Pol found that she had as much energy now at this stage of the pregnancy as she did before it began. The Tucker matriarch was always so full of questions; what to expect from a Vulcan child, how did they intend to see to his education, what human traits would he exhibit. Charles the elder was more staid in regards to those concerns and instead busied himself with fixing and improving things around the house. Despite his advancing years he still exhibited the power and physique of a series five augmentee and over the course of a single afternoon erected a high fence in the back to provide privacy and a place for their rapidly growing sehlat to roam without terrifying anyone who happened upon the now twenty seven kilogram saber-toothed creature.

According to information supplied by Koss' family regarding the sehlat's parentage, it would likely grow to two hundred fifty kilograms by adulthood and would stand approximately one and one tenth meters at the shoulder. T'Pol had expected this information to alarm her father-in-law but instead saw the same twinkle in his eye she always spotted in Trip's whenever something was presented to him as a challenge. Upon completion of the fence he began expanding the back deck, put additional flooring in the attic, and tiled both the kitchen and bathrooms. He was an inexhaustible pool of energy that, in many ways, reminded her of the way Trip had always been around her mother's house. His gruff demeanor no longer fooled T'Pol as she began to sense as much as notice his deep pride in and affection for his son and, by extension, his daughter-in-law and grandchild-to-be. There was something almost agreeable about it as it was emotionally reserved and felt slightly more Vulcan than the dotage from Elaine.

"Well, if we're lucky, I'll be able to be around a lot more, soon." Trip smiled at her softly, a sign that he was still intent on resignation once all the projects were completed.

T'Pol felt herself flush slightly, that kind and utterly open way the corners of his mouth would curl upwards always left her feeling at once exposed and protected. In those moments he couldn't do anything to suppress or hide his feelings of love and adoration and it always left her feeling delightfully discomposed.

"I shall start the coffee while you pull up the schematics." She answered in a pinched voice, suddenly longing for his touch.

She felt the first thread of mischievousness through the bond almost too late. He had sensed her own desire for physical contact and was about to turn it in his own uniquely human way. She could sense his perception moving down his right arm and into his hand, fingers almost instinctively prepping for the proper nerve impulse responses that a quick swat on her backside would produce. Her eyes widened again and she raised a single admonishing finger. "Don't you dare."

"Dare what?" He grinned shamelessly.

"I am twenty nine weeks pregnant, it is not logical or safe to put physical stressors on me."

"Why, darlin', I have _no_ idea what yer talkin' about!"

"I believe the correct response to your assertion would be 'bullshit', k'diwa."

Trip let out a single bellowing laugh before covering his mouth, retroactively seeking to control his outburst from his parents likely both still asleep a few rooms down. "Alright darlin' you win this round."

He walked over and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close and leaning his face down into her hair. "I'm sorry this isn't turnin' out the way we imagined it, darlin'. If I would've known I'd've turned 'em down."

"I still have yet to find anything truly regretful about our current status."

"Really?" He stepped back.

"I will go make coffee." T'Pol replied, sensing they were both at an emotional tipping point and not wanting to lose the entire morning to it.

* * *

><p>"So this is the final design, huh?" Gardner viewed the digitized blueprint and rough sketches on a wall mounted display.<p>

"Mean looking sonuvabitch, isn't it?" Forrest grunted, hand curled around his chin as he eyed the cross section and overhead images.

"But will it work? Can we actually build this thing, can we build more than one of them?" Gardner countered, turning to give a concerned and skeptical look at Admiral Black.

"We can, and we will." Black crowed with more than just a bit of self-satisfaction. Tucker had gone though nearly a dozen designs and generated literally hundreds of build innovations during the process. His warp 8.1 engine would be pulling warp 8.6 in a pinch, his redundant tiered EPS system could provide at least marginal power to every portion and sub-system of the ship even in the case of catastrophic failure. The banks of capacitors and generators would provide enough power to allow this monster to bring four times the firepower of the CG series to bear on any target unfortunate enough to wander into any one of it's twelve firing arcs. They would be able to transport a full brigade of Marines and their equipment if necessary and keep an entire special forces battalion on the ship full time. It had five times the armor of the CG series, redundant multi-layered shield arrays and the capability to sustain the entire crew of one hundred sixty on half life support for three weeks in the event of total system failure.

This was a coup, and in the process of reaching this design Tucker had managed to create five more viable designs for later implementation in the fleet. Production was streamlined to the point of ridiculousness. Everything from power junctions to access tubes to the head was modular, built planet side or in enclosed orbital facilities then tacked together in the super-structure. What would have taken hundreds of orbital workers nearly two years of working in micro-gravity vacuum would take a few score less than ten months.

"Gentleman, I give you the Iowa class battleship." Black said with a grin.

"Iowa class? Waxing a bit nostalgic there, aren't you Greg?" Forrest commented, looking back at the schematic for the monstrous ship.

"It displaces nearly six times as much as the CGs, how is this practically implemented?" Gardner fumed, spearing both with a glare.

"We had forty nine CGs slated to be constructed over the next ten years. Four Niner...at approximately one point three billion a piece. Figure in its service life we'd have to do seven major refits at about ten million a piece." Black replied coolly holding his anger in reserve for the time being.

"To be fair, Greg, how much is this thing going to cost?" Forrest inquired. It was clear he was firmly on the fence, not taking one side or the other but wanting all the facts.

"Three point five five each." Black replied evenly, knowing it was a potential sticking point.

"That's goddamn outrageous!" Sam Gardner thundered, "We could build almost three CGs for each one of these! Are you out of your goddamn mind?"

"The CGs are already obsolete. Our technology has already outpaced them, it was exactly like what Tucker said back in forty four claiming that the obsolescence curve was only five months behind our R&D. Ever wonder why he jumped from the five five engine to the seven fives? Its precisely because by the time we would have gotten six fives in place we already had the seven fives half way through development." Black retorted, still avoiding raising his voice.

"We have a lot of time and development already invested in the CGs, we can't mothball them." Forrest protested.

"Too much time, too much development. We're going to have to retrofit every last one of them currently deployed for the warp eight point one protocols, but we've already got eight point six capability so we'll have to begin phasing an upgrade to eight six before the paint's even dry on the eight one reactors. We're already going to have to tear out the entire EPS system on every one of the seven five models to accommodate eight one." Black fired back, gesticulating in time with each series of upgrades that would be needed. "But the eight six engine is thirty five percent larger which means we'll have to alter the entire engineering section layout to accommodate the increased engine size. The DDs won't take the upgrade at all since the tolerances are already too tight so we'll have to mothball half of them and leave the rest in place for theatre defense only."

Gardner was silent, trying to formulate a counter-argument but Black didn't let up and launched into another fusillade of arguments. "Then what do we do? Do we have cruisers tasked as cruiser escorts? What do we do then? We expect to be able to extend forces across twenty sectors within the next decade, but to do that we'd have to slate another thirty CGs all of which will be obsolete within five years and will have to be built on specs cobbled together from seven major refit programs. So we'll have to produce another seventy nine CGs total to cover the space we want to cover with ships that will already be mothball worthy five years before we're even finished building them all."

Gardner realized he was losing the debate but refused to allow himself to be so thoroughly bested, "But what good is a battle ship this size for theatre defense?"

"Defense?" Black looked taken aback, appalled, alarmed by the implication. "This isn't built to defend anything. We can't be in the game of defending...defending means someone is attacking us, it means someone is pushing us around, it means someone is threatening us and our allies. We're not going to defend anything, Sam. The verdict is in gentlemen...space isn't a friendly place. The Klingons in forty seven, the Xindi in fifty three, and now the Romulans. The only way we're going to ensure that space remains a safe place for humanity and our allies is to project power in such a way that anyone who is planning belligerence is either to terrified to attempt anything or too damn scared of what the consequences entail to continue."

"You know the politicians aren't going to like that kind of talk." Forrest demurred.

"Last I checked there weren't any politicians, at least not human ones, among the dead on Vulcan." Black replied icily.

"Alright, Greg, ease back." Gardner replied in a pouting tone. "Assuming that the premise of power projection is accepted, how long will it take to start building this thing."

"We already have." Black replied with a none-to-certain amount of snide triumph in his voice.

"What?" Gardner boomed, fixing the shorter man and his condescending smirk with a look of barely varnish rage.

"I put twenty three R and D programs on building 'mock ups' of Tucker's modular designs. The designs are really cost cutting, so we were able to produce space worthy proof of concept prototypes. Right now we have about three percent of the substructure completed." Black replied in muted triumph.

"How the hell did you pull that off? That's misappropriation of funds, mister! They're going to break you for this!" Gardner roared, starting forward only to be restrained, likely for his own safety, by Forrest who was keenly aware of Black's background and combat training. Unlike Gardner, the younger Greg Black had not come up through staff positions and bureaucracy, Black was the sailor's admiral and commanded great respect among both branches of MCS, to whom he was more akin than any of the other Admirals on the MCS command board, and among many of Earth's standing national militaries.

"We take old conex containers into low orbit every week to let repair crews practice EVA operations, this time all we did was give them functioning components to work with." Black paused a moment, then added cutting menacing eyes over to Gardner, "Any idea what that costs us?"

The shorter admiral turned and crossed the room to his desk, picking up a pile of folders and tapping them into order before setting them back down again. "I'm getting this thing built one way or another. If Earth won't see reason, I'll bet you anything I can get Vulcan or Andoria too. This is your opportunity to get on the right side of history. The politicians, the media, the intelligentsia...they're the ones who want a meek, demure, little earth that stays out of the way because we're upstarts and don't deserve a position of power. They don't understand the concept of who is doing the heavy lifting. They don't grasp the significance of destroyer and frigate task groups securing trade corridors between Rigel and Telar and Vulcan."

Black quieted for a moment, eyes rolling down and away as if accessing some part of his memory that didn't place any significance on Gardner and Forrest, the plans, the politics, or even Tucker who devised the whole thing. It was something deeply introspective, almost a spiritual tick that forced men like Black to be fierce advocates, stalwart defenders, the first, last, and everything in between guardians of people, race, and planet.

"I'm getting this thing built, that's final."

Forrest furrowed a concerned but amused brow at Black, "I actually kind of like it, honestly."

"Alright, suppose we sign off on this, what do you think is going to get a project like this past the politicians?" Gardner finally asked, his tone grudging, unwilling to concede but knowing that Black was, as insufferable as it was, right again.

"The families of four hundred thirty eight dead marines and two thousand nine hundred and fifty two dead Vulcans. And if that's not enough, residual guilt about thirty eight thousand six hundred nine dead or missing Romulans who if they had been turned back in orbit might not have fomented any of this." Black rumbled low, like a quake coming up from his chest, dire and imminently threatening.

"Going to parade them into the appropriations committee hearing then?" Gardner countered snidely, knowing this kind of politicking was a low blow. To be certain, it was effective, it got results and it cast military appropriations in a light of necessity, but it wasn't good doctrine. To play on the emotions of the politicians and public could just as easily be reversed when an armed force managed to screw up, and once you played the card it was out there for anyone to use at any time.

"If I have to." Black replied without a pause.


	28. Chapter 28

"T'Pol, would you like some tea, sweetie?" Elaine Tucker caught herself after the words had already left her mouth, ignoring the fact that Vulcans found such endearing appellations illogical, her daughter-in-law was also not her junior but, rather, her contemporary. In fact, Elaine was actually two years younger than the petite Vulcan who was literally ready to pop at any moment. Any day now, their grandson would be born and after a few days both she and Charles junior would be able to vacate the Satellite Beach home and leave it to the couple who seemed to be chafing under their continued presence but understood its necessity with Trip's demanding work schedule and T'Pol's delicate condition. Elaine found herself at once anticipating and dreading meeting T'Pol's mother who was even now days out from arriving to attend to her daughter and grandchild. She wondered how a Vulcan woman of 117 years would measure up in terms of graceful aging, how her personality would compare with that of her daughter. Trip spoke of her with some fondness, on the basis of that Elaine was able to assume that she, at least, was similarly tolerant of Trip.

She still found herself routinely shocked and unable to grasp it all, her son and this Vulcan, it set the precedent but more than that, there was clearly a strange alchemy between them that transcended mere sexual chemistry, they were strange compliments to one another. She had just sort of assumed that the evening conversation nine months prior had been just another encounter with on of Trip's long list of girlfriends or flings. She didn't want to think ill of her son, but even she had to admit that he was a bit flippant when it came to love and had broken more than his fair share of hearts over the years. But there was something about this outwardly cold, hard woman that awoke the greatest fire she had ever seen in her son. The way he looked at her, even with a face that was impassive and lacking in affect, she could see the raging passion burning just behind his eyes. There were moments where they would just stare at one another, neither saying a word, their faces letting the occasional emotive cue slip that something was going on, some sort of communication that only they were privy too. Physically, the couple was never affectionate in her presence, but Elaine suspected that there was indeed something undeniably powerful between them; Trip was always quieter and more staid in her presence, and T'Pol always seemed to be more vibrant when in his, almost as if they were both compensating for the preferences and personality of the other.

As she crossed into the sitting room she could almost immediately feel something was wrong before she even lay eyes on T'Pol. When the Vulcan looked up to her with eyes that bespoke alarm and confusion Elaine felt her heart leap for a moment before spying the soaked chair and dress. It only took a second for her to realize what had occurred and despite the usual composure T'Pol exhibited, Elaine knew in this moment she was nothing if not a terrified girl whose body had just done what was, quite possibly, the strangest thing it had ever done in her life up to that point. There was an almost primal fear that no amount of mental discipline or preparation could adequately manage to alleviate. She was certain that somewhere in that steely Vulcan mind she had to be wondering if something was wrong, was it supposed to happen like this, was the baby safe, was it too early, a thousand worries that no amount of calm thought would be able to assuage. Any words she could say would ring hollow, all she could do was take command of the situation as was a matriarch's purview and set about the task of readying Solan Tucker for his debut to the world.

"Your water broke, honey, just stay there, we'll get the car pulled around and get you to the hospital. It's time sweetheart, you're gonna have the baby." Mrs. Tucker cooed soothingly, she had been through this exact same thing enough times for it to be old hat by now, and for all of T'Pol's intelligence, discipline, and composure this was something she was completely unprepared for. "Charlie, get the car, our grandbaby wants out."

No sooner had to words left her mouth, the domestic communicator began chirping, snatching T'Pol's concerned gaze over to it, something desperate and needy in her eyes as she kept her hands clamped over her belly, fearing to rise. Elaine crossed over to the console and pressed a key to answer the incoming call, speaking tersely, "Hello?"

"Momma, I'm leavin' to head for the hospital now." His voice was skipping, the sound of duty boots clapping against linoleum an indicator that he was charging down a corridor at a brisk jog if not a full run.

Motherly instinct immediately took over and any possible link to the events transpiring immediately behind her was lost, "What happened?"

"Momma, T'Pol is havin' the baby!" He replied indignantly.

"What...how did you-" She didn't have time to finish.

"I'll call Doctor Kovel on the way." And with that he disconnected the call.

The Tucker matriarch stood dumbfounded, then called out, "Charlie! Did you call Trip?"

"Dangit woman, I thought you said to get the car!" His voice echoed back into the sitting room.

"I did!"

"Then you call the boy!" He thundered.

"He just called here!" She replied, turning away from the comm unit and heading over to where T'Pol sat.

"What?"

"Trip just called here." Elaine repeated with raised voice.

"Then why do I need to call him?"

"Nevermind!" Under her breath she mumbled, "Not a Tucker man with a lick of sense, the any of them. Alright, sweetie, let's go to the car, let me help you up."

Carefully she helped T'Pol to her feet and then taking station behind her began to gently guide her towards the foyer. The Vulcan took deliberate steps, moving very cautiously as if the payload in her womb ran the risk of exploding. Elaine had seen it before, experienced it herself, the "first time" jitters very evident regardless of the almost genetic stoicism.

"Unless there's something really different about how y'all are built down there, he's not gonna fall out, sweetheart." Elaine cajoled in a soft, even tone.

T'Pol just nodded, quickening her pace a little, still moving in a deliberate and careful fashion, feet wider apart than usual. As she approached the open door, Elaine could already hear the hum of the fuel-cell engine and drive motors of their car. The driver side and passenger rear doors open as Charles Jr. dropped the overnight bags in the trunk with the items the new mother would need. Elaine saw her husband spy their approach and he quickly closed the trunk, crossing to the porch where he could render assistance to the pregnant Vulcan as she began to descend the steps. He took his daughter-in-law's hand giving her someone to lean on as he helped her down each step in his at-once gentle and powerful way.

"Don't you fret a bit, lil lady, Tucker boys always were ones to do things on their own schedule, this is just par for the course." He glanced over to his wife with a wink, "Elaine about popped with both of ours, they shot out like lil pink canon rounds."

"Charlie Tucker!" Elaine scolded, a frown on her face.

"Oh come off it, Elly, she's gonna hear all these stories sooner or later."

"Will it be this...abrupt, every time?" T'Pol squeaked with a slightly breathless tone.

"You'll know what to expect next time, dear." Elaine cooed, "The first time is always the most frightening."

"I am not frightened." T'Pol tried to retort feebly, her words in utter contradiction to her tone. Her eyes wide and face flushed a verdant green she wasn't managing an adequate bluff on that front either.

"Honey, everyone is frightened the first time." Mrs. Tucker countered, her tone pragmatic and indicating that she did not believe T'Pol's assertion one iota.

* * *

><p>"My daughter is giving birth to her first born, I believe it would be prudent that I help attend to the birthing process." T'Les was doing very little to hold her irritation in check with the petty bureaucrat of a ensign at MCS Transport Depot, San Francisco who wanted to ensure every "i" was doubly dotted and every "t" triply crossed.<p>

"Ma'am, transport to the Vulcan compound in Sausalito can be authorized, but these coordinates are in Florida." The tone was almost condescending, and for a moment T'Les felt a thread of ancestral rage float up towards the surface of her layer of logic. She looked at the skinny brat, clearly little more than months out of the academy and a position of some authority giving him delusions of grandeur and wondered for a fraction of a second just how easy to would be to snap him in two.

"I am aware of the coordinates I have provided, my daughter is not in Sausalito."

"I was not informed of that." He replied snippily, his know-it-all response clearly failing him.

"It is above your pay grade." T'Les let the words slide of her tongue with some relish, she had hear humans use the term many times since the liberation of Vulcan and at the moment it fit so perfectly with the events occurring before her.

The Ensign began tapping at the console before him as a Lieutenant Commander approached the registration counter, concern and maybe just a touch of irritation painted on this senior officer's face, "What's the story here?"

"Transport authorization, sir."

"That goes without saying, ensign, what is the hold up?" The taller officer's tone was curt but he kept his voice low, trying to maintain some semblance of propriety. "These coordinates are for the Canaveral area, authorize the transport and get on with it."

"Sir, the story doesn't seem right." The Ensign protested.

"That's not your position to decide, ensign." The lieutenant commander looked up to T'Les, "I apologize for the holdup ma'am, what business did you have in the Cape Canaveral area?"

"My daughter is giving birth to her first child there." T'Les replied evenly, knowing that at least with the more senior officer her authorization would be expedited.

"And your name, ma'am?" He began tapping on the console, prompting the ensign to step back and fold his arms across his chest with a petulant expression.

"T'Les."

"Yes ma'am, we have you on record right here, daughter; T'Pol, care of..." He paused, sensing that he was perhaps reading privileged information, "If you'll step this way we'll get you there directly, ma'am."

T'Les nodded and, upon grabbing her bags, began to follow the officer to one of the transport pads. This was her first visit to earth and she found the planet decidedly alien and strange, still, she found comfort in having solid ground beneath her feet as the twelve day trip from Vulcan had been trying on her nerves. It was the first journey of the variety that she had completed and while it was hardly the most stressful episode of her life, she found that she did not view extended space travel as something she felt she would benefit from doing more of in the future.

* * *

><p>Trip tore out of the subspace dynamics lab annex, throwing the double doors wide open and almost flattening a pair of General Dynamics lab jockeys on his way out. He turned just long enough to make an apology, then broke into a full sprint, tearing towards the staff parking area as fast as his legs would carry him. In the immediate moment, nothing was more important than reaching his car and he allowed the bee-line course to carry him off the paved sidewalks and onto the grass plots that separated the various offices, labs, and warehouses of the Advanced Applications Campus. He was barely even mentally aware of the fact that he was hurtling the low chain and post barriers that separated grass lot from sidewalk and again the sidewalk from the next lot. He knew his car was about a quarter mile from the lab he had been in when he sensed T'Pol's water break, he knew that at his current rate of speed it would take me approximately a minute to reach the car. From the parking lot it would take him roughly twelve minutes to make it to the main gate, one minute down Mueller to the 1A, then another six minutes to the West Cocoa Beach Causeway and the Cape Canaveral Hospital.<p>

Every minute that he wasn't there would be torture for T'Pol, and for each torturous moment she would have to endure without the support and succor of her mate, he would agonize over his inability to provide that most basic of comforts to her. Part of him hoped that Dr. Kovel would insist on running some basic tests before beginning the delivery process, at least then he could be there to hold her hand or, at the very least, act as a psychic punching bag for her as she completed the process that had begun as an idle conversation while fixing wall panels in her quarters months before.

It felt like it had been a lifetime since he ran with this kind of unvarnished desperation, the goal of the car just a step on a journey of such dire necessity, elemental and spiritual, not even his life itself was as precious as was the need that he get to the hospital; not in 10 minutes, not right now, but five minutes ago. Even while his brain was busy trying to force him to reconcile the fact that T'Pol and his parents would likely arrive after he did, he couldn't help but feel like he was holding up everything, that his wife was suffering untold agonies because _he_ and he alone was not there to provide her with comfort as her spouse and the one who put her in the state. Ahead a trio of enlisted data entry personnel from the compliance office had exited their office complex and were ambling towards the parking lot. Trip didn't lessen his pace a second, bellowing as he came, "Make a hole! Make a hole!"

They stepped aside just in time for him to vault the first chain, his right foot touching the concrete just long enough to launch him into another leap over the second chain and back into the grass. Twenty minutes...these were likely going to be the longest and shortest twenty minutes of his life.

* * *

><p>T'Pol felt a new growing sense of alarm, not over what was happening but rather what wasn't happening; she wasn't experiencing any contractions. Everything she had read regarding both Vulcan and Human pregnancies indicated that she should be experiencing strong contractions. Something wasn't going as planned, her water broke, but there was no indication that her body was trying to complete the birthing process beyond that. All she could sense from her child was an utterly unknowable and unfathomable chaos and confusion. It was almost as if all emotions imaginable had been rolled into one, a single mental process that encompassed everything that defined life and all its experiences bound together in a timeless and endless mixture of vibrant mayhem.<p>

She found that the experience frightened her, it was almost as if she was getting to watch and listen to her child drown; the tiny mental process confused and scared and clawing at whatever it could to try to hold on. Any attempt she made to reach the tiny mind, to help calm it fell short and she began to feel her own sense of dread as she began to wonder if her baby was no, indeed, dying. When Doctor Kovel finally arrived T'Pol had been on the verge of emotional collapse as the worry continued to build. She managed to keep enough emotional reserve in place that her voice had totally betrayed her concern when she asked what was wrong.

Kovel had, as always, been blithely calm, "Your body believes there are still three more weeks of gestation necessary, the child, however, does not require that additional time, we will proceed with surgical extraction."

With that the Vulcan physician left to prepare for the procedure leaving T'Pol alone to worry herself over where her mate was. Her mother should be arriving any minute as well, was she even aware that she was about to have the baby? Why was she suddenly alone in the room without anyone to provide help if it was needed? She focused on the bond, trying to located Trip's consciousness but found that she couldn't focus on anything other than her own sense of panic and that of her child.

"Sir, you can't go in there." A muted voice protested just outside the room, halting a pair of steadfastly advancing footsteps.

"T'Hell I can't! My wife's in there!"

"Sir, you have the wrong room-"

T'Pol felt her heart leap at the familiar voice and called out loud enough to be heard, "Trip?"

The door flew open presenting her with a very relieved Charles A. Tucker III in the woodland NWU that had become his standard duty attire.

"Sir, this room is reserved for-" The nurse never got to finish speaking, Trip was already in the room and over to T'Pol's bedside, her hand already enclosed in his.

"Are you alright, darlin'?"

"I am acceptable, k'diwa. I believe in the future it would be prudent to announce yourself at the front desk rather than coming to look for me on your own." T'Pol looked over to the Nurse who seemed more than a little flabbergasted. She realized how thoroughly relieved she was that her mate was with her, it presented the opportunity to be embarrassed and critical of his behavior.

"I did...sort of..." He protested.

"She's your spouse?" The Nurse, still standing, at the door looked aghast. T'Pol was relatively certain how things had gone, Trip asked about a Vulcan woman and without any further amplification or explanation gone off looking while the nurses at their station worried about the privacy of the patient.

"Why else do you think I was lookin' for her?" Trip frowned.

"You didn't exactly make it clear, sir."

"You must learn to behave with less impulsiveness if you wish to be a proper 'vulcan' husband, k'diwa." T'Pol chided with an amused expression, all the sensations of worry and stress had managed to flow away now that he was present, it was almost as if by dint of his boisterous presence any potential ill that may be visited up the waiting-to-be-born child were forced to vacate under the weight of Trip's personality. "Logic would also dictate you provide more specific information in the future."

"Future, huh? Plannin' on doin' this a few more times, darlin'?" He gave her a rakish grin, the same one he had laid on her time and time again, the one that always seemed to creep on his face whenever she said something that even vaguely made an inference to sex; acknowledged the fact that she was as much a sexual creature as he was, acknowledged the fact that she loved it.

"We discussed three, did we not." Just as the last word rolled of her lips she felt a hard kick against her uterine walls, momentarily stealing her breath. Trip felt the momentary shock and alarm and placed a hand on her stomach, feeling another strong push against the restraining flesh.

"He wants out...now." Trip looked over to the nurse who had not dismissed herself from the room, still seeming to be viewing the father with some skepticism, "Where's the doc?"

"He's prepping for the cesarean, and on that note, if you want to be present you need to go scrub up as well, mister..." She lilted, prompting him to provide a confirmatory name.

"Tucker."

"You should go scrub up, mister Tucker, we need to prepare the mother for the procedure."

Trip looked down to T'Pol, "Will you be alright, darlin'?"

"I am certain I will be fine for a few more minutes, you should do as you are bade, I will desire your presence during the procedure itself."

"Alright, darlin', I'll go do that."

* * *

><p>Admiral Black looked up as Admiral Gardner burst unceremoniously into his office. There had been no call from his aide, no knock, no notification that he was coming to his headquarters building, the door just flew open as Gardner, his face ruddy and eyes wide in an expression that looked a bit like alarm through a lens of inside-out toad. Gardner was angry frequently, his expressions often reflected this individual foible, but concern, alarm, mortal or philosophical terror was far less common and usually indicative of something truly awful.<p>

"Did you see the news?"

Black sat down the PADD he had been reviewing, sudden waves of dread over what could possibly be heralded this time. He found out about the Xindi attack, the Klingon Offensive after it was already being announced in the media. The idea that some new horror had befallen mankind was first in his mind, "What is it? What happened?"

"That boy of yours...he did it."

"What are you talking about?" Black furrowed his brow, unsure what Gardner was blathering about this time but feeling at least a twinge of relief that humanity was apparently not at risk.

"Tucker...he really did it." Gardner turned the office's main view screen to a news feed with a report line coming from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"What did he do?"

The feed audio answered the question, the anonymously flat tones of a news caster began to recap the story, "Once again, the first half human, half alien child confirmed as having been born at the Cape Canaveral Hospital at twelve seventeen this afternoon. We have been able to confirm that that mother of the child is Vulcan. At this time we have no further information or the identity of the parents beyond knowledge that the mother of the child is Vulcan and the father is human. We're being told that the doctors that oversaw the birth will be speaking to the press shortly to discuss some of the specifics. Again...one for the history books ladies and gentleman, the first half human child born today in Florida."

Gardner cut the volume on the feed, "We're not going to be able to suppress this for long. Their names are going to come out, and then everyone will know in short order that he was banging the cultural attaché while he was still serving with her. Then how do you think this is going to pan out when they find out you handed him lead on darkwater and that we'll have him helming the first Iowa class off the line?"

"I think most people will assume he's a pretty and unique snowflake that fell in love with a Vulcan and we'll be able to point at his career record to explain why we tossed him lead on our new line of battleships." Black answered with just a hint of acidity in his voice.

"You're going to be the one catching the flak on this one, they're not about to kill the program once they see what you've done, but don't be surprised if Tucker is left to twist in the wind on this. Until then, what are we going to do to keep this under wraps?" Gardner grumbled, folding his arms across his chest.

"You still don't see the big picture on this...it's a half human, half Vulcan baby. It means one of us and one of them loved each other so much that they wanted to have a baby. The differences seem pretty minor after that." Black let a wisp of a smile cross his face, "I'm telling you, it's just the beginning. Once this gets out there isn't going to be a voice to be heard asking what we're going to do to punish them for breaking regs. It's going to be all about 'where do we all go from here', what is the combined fate of our races now that we've goteen past one of the most intimate problems that could exist between them? It's going to lead to a big multi-national alliance. Mark my words."

* * *

><p>T'Les looked down into the tiny face, eyes closed serenely concealing the striking blue he had inherited from his father. Tiny balled fists framing the gently upward swept brows and pointed ears and skin that was perhaps a bit more pink than bronze colored. Framing the face were the first few wispy flaxen strands of hair, another element inherited from his human father. She gently ran her fingers through the gossamer strands, marveling at its softness and the benign expression of her grandchild; like a little Kolinahr master already embracing the supreme calm of Surak. Still, something about the corners of its mouth, almost pointing upwards in a human smile intrigued her. It was almost as if Solan Tucker, not even two hours old, was already saying "I know something you don't know." This child was neither Vulcan nor human, and yet both at the same time, and in so being perhaps it would inherit the strengths of both with none of the weaknesses. To look at him now, T'Les couldn't help but believe that the only think that would ever try or challenge her grandson would be his ability and willingness to temper those disparate elements of himself to become his own unique being.<p>

Emotions were overwhelming her as she cradled the tiny body; feelings of pride, admiration, and unconditional love strained her control. All the feelings she had experienced with the birth of T'Pol, but more vivid now than she remembered them in the past, and now with a strange element of sadness that her mate, for whom the child was named, would not be able to see this wondrous little culmination of a human's love for a Vulcan and a Vulcan's love for a human. Her grandchild, the words rolled through her mind as she accepted the weight and gravity of it. Her daughter, the child she herself had given birth too was not a mother as well, had become a woman and found for herself a mate in whom she could find both love and pride. Even as the joy threatened to drown her so did the ache in the part of her katra that still missed her mate.

"Solan ko'mekh-il kel'o." Trip intoned quietly as he walked over to where T'Les held the child, rocking it gently in her arms.

"Kel'o yuk-tor, Solan-kam. Du sa-fu vaksur." The elder Vulcan gently stroked the child's face again, "You should be proud, Charles."

"I didn't do anything, it's T'Pol who did such a good job." He looked down into the tiny face and was momentarily rewarded with opened eyes, twinkling blue back at his father You're retarded use of the world liberal before lids slid lazily shut once again.

"I am certain she would agree you did your part." T'Les arched her left brow and looked back to where her daughter lay asleep while Elaine and Charles jr. sat vigil. The surgery had been incredibly successful, doctors Kovel and Robertson decided on a rather non-conventional side-access incision and plucked the child out in less than three minutes. The first three swats cleared the lungs but failed to produce a cry from the child, with the fourth finally eliciting a single protesting screech after which Solan Tucker immediately quieted down. Kovel marveled that the child was calm and sedate even by Vulcan standards and there was some initial worry that perhaps there was something wrong with the newborn. A battery of scans latter they only conclusion that could be reached was that the child was very calm and content as evidenced by the large concentration of serotonin and endorphins in his neurochemistry.

The young family seemed to be experiencing an almost super natural level of attunement to one another. It was clear to T'Les that there was a strong bond between all three; mother to child, child to father, husband to wife, all three interconnected in some primal and unspoken consciousness that T'Les could only imagine was as ancient as Vulcan telepathy itself. Trip had been holding the child, and almost as if some unconscious cue had prompted him he handed the child to T'Pol who immediately brought the newborn to her breast where he quickly latched. There was no fanfare or fumbling on T'Pol's part, she simply did as was necessary while Solan fed contentedly and upon satisfying his hunger immediately fell asleep, prompting T'Pol to do the same. Trip, on the other hand, became hyper alert once both mother and child were asleep, almost as if his position in the family hierarchy had been established as protector as, logically, he would be given his skill set and genetic predilections. In a strange way, T'Les could understand the kind of comfort that would bring to T'Pol and Solan; an innate knowledge that Trip could and would bring horrible violence to bear on anything that could possibly threaten them. In T'Pol's case this was understanding born of knowledge of Trip's past, but for the hours old Solan there was a bizarre unconscious knowledge that was evident when his tiny body seemed to relax more into his grandmother's arms the second his father drew near.

There would be a few weeks to observe the phenomena as she stayed to provide aid to her daughter in the wake of giving birth to her first child, it would also serve to relieve Mr. and Mrs. Tucker who had kept vigil over T'Pol for close to two months now and were doubtlessly ready to return home. T'Pol would also certainly find some relaxation in having another Vulcan presence in the home rather than having her mental discipline constantly strained by the doting of a pair of emotive humans. T'Les was certain she would be able to read the cues indicating when she should leave the couple alone to bond with their child better than either Charles Jr. or Elaine would be able to, a fact that would certainly ease some tension for the new mother and father.

For all her concerns over the elements of Vulcan propriety, there was one distinct advantage she could think of that being on Earth presented; she could be permitted to indulge in the utterly illogical and emotional excess of demonstrating her affection for her grandchild. On Vulcan such behavior would not be considered permissible between anyone other than child and mother, not even fathers could expect to display such affection for their children, but on Earth it was all normal and expected. As she lifted the tiny head to press against her forehead she for a moment felt nothing but feelings of contentment and safety from the little mind and at that moment she felt dangerously close to allowing an emotional outburst to get the better of her; a fact, she reflected, would go utterly unnoticed since all she felt was an uncontrollable urge to smile, which, with back turned, she did where only Solan would be able to see, if his eyes had been open.

* * *

><p>Commander Nassir al-Sistani was well aware of Captain Tucker as much by reputation as by the actual project itself, and the prospect of meeting the semi-legendary fighterengineer had resulted in a whole week of nights where sleep eluded him. There were plenty of rumors floating around about a new posting, something better than commanding the _U.S.S. Detroit_ but not a side-step onto a Frigate and definitely not a posting to one of the CG class boats. He could say with all modesty that he was a good attack boat skipper, every performance appraisal had said the same. During his year tour of the Romulan border as a component of the Argelius Patrol Flotilla he and his crew accounted for seven intercepts, forcing no fewer than eleven Romulan ships back across their border. He was a hard charger, a quality that served the fleet well during wartime. Tucker, was, according to everything he had heard, something of an eccentric; an engineering genius who would have been as comfortable in a lab as in a warship. Here was a man who could have had his entire career dirt-side without ever having to worry for a second about positioning or fleet politics. Most of his ilk had never gone past Mars or, at the furthest, Europa. They certainly didn't undertake the extensive cross training in Marine combat training, and special forces field procedure. Nothing about Tucker as the engineering genius jived with the multiple-awards-for-valor recipient that was in the files, so it was strange when someone suggested he show up to the meeting in standard NWUs with soft cover rather than the more popular Naval Service Utility Uniform favored on most ships. The separate jacket and trousers of the NWU felt more natural than the jumpsuit of the NSUU but something about the camouflage just seemed out of place and counter-intuitive, especially when he was standing in a docking arm at the LaGrange 2 fleet yard, thousands of miles from the nearest forest or anything resembling woodlands.

When al-Sistani caught view of the captain he immediately noted the jump wings with combat jump device, marksman badges, combat deployment badge and various elements of the uniform that reinforced his background as a war fighter par excellence. Attention to detail had always been something Nassir prided himself on and he immediately began looking for the details he would overlook; the smudges of dirt on his hands and forearms, the scrape on his forehead and the accompanying smudge, pockets stuffed with tools, a worn out PADD clenched in his right hand and the slight discoloration of lighter skin on his left ring finger where a wedding band usually resided. He would certainly remove the ring while working on some engineering issue. Corridors and cramped crawl spaces were often covered in films of dirt and dust just like that which was on his arms, hands, and forehead. Tucker had clearly been working on something just moments before, getting his hands dirty and into the thick of it as would befit and engineer of his pedigree.

The commander snapped his boots together and saluted Tucker who quickly and loosely returned the gesture without breaking stride, the PADD switching quickly from right hand to left in order to return the salute.

"Commander al-Sistani, pleasure to finally meet you." Tucker nodded, his right hand coming out as he closed the distance.

"Captain Tucker, sir, wouldn't have wanted to miss it." He returned the handshake, "There has been a lot of talk about the boat you're building up here."

"Today was a good day for you to come on up then, we're applyin' the designation today." Tucker gestured over to an observation copula further down the docking arm.

Al-Sistani fell into step behind the captain and followed to the observation windows. Seven months prior a major controversy surrounding the Captain almost derailed the entire project. When news broke that, then, Commander Tucker had been involved in a romantic relationship with _Enterprise's_ cultural attaché, Sub-Commander T'Pol and that they had produced a child the Arms Committee had called for Tucker's head. Political pressure on the part of certain human apologist groups had fomented the trouble. What most common folk saw as a sign that humanity wasn't isolated and shunned by extant races the apologists, academics, and intellectuals were calling the violation of another race and humanity's corrupting influence. The few scholars and intellectuals that pointed to the fact that when races intermixed there was invariably interbreeding were mostly crucified in the media.

The circus around Tucker and his wife and child hit a fever pitch that suddenly broke when the first pictures of baby Solan Tucker grabbing "daddy's" nose were finally captured by a photographer. Suddenly the strange and abstract concept for a human/Vulcan hybrid child was put into a new light; it was just a little baby acting like a little baby. It was doing what any human, or Vulcan for that matter, baby might do. The fact that former-sub-commander T'Pol was beautiful and graceful helped a good bit too. Suddenly people started demanding that they be left alone, that the new mother and baby not be subjected to the scrutiny and intrusions by the media. Around that same time the MCS Admiralty crafted a careful PR campaign focusing on the new areas of cooperation between Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Rigel, and Telar. The new Iowa class battleship, still only a name and idea without any tangible respresentation, became a symbol of human strength and cooperation with our galactic neighbors that would serve to protect all the races of the immediate interstellar community and crush aggression by any extant groups that would seek to harm Earth and its allies.

Nassir found it hard to think of Tucker in terms of the father and family man when his war record was being paraded around as justification for a number of things in sub-committee meetings, media debates, and among the brass of MCS. Most of the details about the Iowa class and the, as of yet, undisclosed six classes that were part of a phased restructuring of the Naval branch were highly secret, what was none was that Tucker was heavily involved in the development cycle though his level of involvement was still largely speculative. When Admiral Forrest contacted him a week earlier and informed him that he would be meeting with Captain Tucker, the designer of the Iowa class, as the Admiral put it.

"Exactly how much of this is your brain-child, sir?"

Tucker turned and gave Nassir a sheepish look, "All of it."

"All of it?"

"Stem to Stern, down to the bolts we'd use, the engine, the systems, I started workin' on the design and just threw out all the old plans and started from scratch." Tucker admitted as if it was a matter of some embarrassment rather than a moment to be imminently proud of.

As they approached the copula, Al-Sistani got his first view of the ship, the long squat sweep of it, the aggressive lines of the super-structures built above and below the saucer, the enlarge module section containing the deflector array and the colossal armored nacelles. It was almost too fast looking to bear the moniker battleship, it looked like it could outrun anything in space and was easily twice as big as the CG models.

"Is that her, sir?" It was a silly question, he already knew it had to be the ship.

"Yep, the U.S.S. Tirpitz." Tucker folded his arms across his chest.

"Tirpitz?" Al-Sistani cocked an amused brow, "I imagine that name went over like a bug in a punch bowl."

Tucker chuckled, "The appropriations committee 'bout had a fit."

"So, how did they get that name pushed through?" Nassir felt a grin starting to twist his lips, this was certain to be a good story.

"Well, you know Admiral Black...if he wants'ta do somethin' he usually gets it done. He did some sort of study or somethin', turns out certain names just sound more aggressive regardless of language or race. They did a study on a buncha different aliens and turns out 'Tirpitz' sounds aggressive to anyone regardless of language." Tucker shrugged, "So they decided BB zero one would be the Tirpitz just so we could let everyone know that we weren't kiddin'."

"What are those four protruding hull structures, sir?" Nassir pointed at the long aggressive looking structures that extended out above and below the saucer.

"Weapons emplacements...we've got batteries of phaser cannons and rail guns emplaced."

"How much firepower are we talking, sir, if I can ask?"

"We're talkin' about approximately six times the firepower of a CG that can be brought to bear on an given fire arc." Tucker pointed to one of the dorsal structures, a series of panels on the side indicating weapons emplaced inside the housing, "Each phase cannon battery consists of two pulse emitters and a pair of continuous projection arrays. There's six batteries total each side on the dorsal hull, three each ventral, with rail guns, photonic torpedoes, and capital grade missiles."

The commander whistled, "Look at all that freedom..."

Tucker grinned, "So, I take it from that you wouldn't mind bein' XO of the boat, huh?"

Nassir decided to play it cool, not give away that he was hoping beyond hope that the meeting today was to offer him a billet on the new ship, but part of him figured that he shouldn't seem too eager, he had to demonstrate he was a man that believed in pride and duty in equal measure, and while this would definitely be a step up over the _Detroit_ or just about any other ship in the fleet, he considered the little DD class ship home and the crew, family. "I don't know, Captain, not sure if this is an upgrade over the Big D." He looked out at the lines of the massive warship again, it was begging for combat, "Big experimental rig like this will probably be stuck on in-system patrols for at least eighteen months before the suits are willing to let us take her out for a scrap."

Tucker's expression became suddenly very serious, leaving Al-Sistani to wonder if he hadn't perhaps over played his hand, offending the captain. "No such luck on that account...we're gonna be taken her right out of dock and onto the Romulan line. Fact is, we really need aggressive skippers on these boats, one's that'll use 'em to their fullest potential. There's nothin' official yet, but after the shake down..."

"I don't think they'd hand me command of a boat like this quite that quickly, sir."

"Nope, but they're ready to hand you XO right now..." Tucker allowed a bit of a grin onto his face, "Not like they're gonna give you much of an option, the orders have been cut, Detroit is bein' moved back for another round'a retrofits and you and your senior staff are gettin' moved to Tirpitz."

Any attempts to play it cool failed as a big grin crossed the Iraqi's face, "Thank you very much, sir. Mind if I ask who will be skipper?"

Tucker ran a hand through his hair, "Well, for the shakedown, I'll be cap'n of the boat. After our first six months on the line we'll be puttin' back in for any tweaks, and they'll figure out who'll be CO...I'm bankin' on A. G. Robinson, though."

Commander Al-Sistani turned to fully face the captain, "It'll be my privilege to be your XO, sir."

"Welcome aboard, commander...we've gotta good six more weeks'a work to get 'er in fightin' trim, then we'll be puttin' to sea." Tucker extended a hand which the commander took and shook firmly.

"Thank you, captain Tucker."

"I've got one rule before we go any further...call me Trip."

* * *

><p><strong><strong>[!-Author's Note-!] <strong>**

****In the relevant story media section of my profile I have a link to the first images pertaining to the Infinite Diversities story line, namely an image of the Iowa Class for better idea of scale and appearance as well as an image of MCS small arms used by Trip and MARSOC.****


	29. Chapter 29

A contest of wills, the duel of conflicting personalities, the primeval struggle of parent versus child was playing out in miniature within the confines of the Tucker sitting room. Solan, the challenger, stared back at his mother with a mixture of defiance and mischief, as if he could somehow understand that his own defiance, his illogical insistence was somehow confounding her capacity to react. Apex being, provider of sustenance, cleaner of bottom, and giver of bathes...mother, momma, ko-mekh, T'Pol; there were far to many labels used for her for him to keep track of. A single streamlined title was needed by which she could be universally identified, one name to be the overarching identifier would make recognition much less confusing. There was a single personal identifier to which he would respond, Solan, any attempts to draw his attention with other appellations would, in majority of circumstances, be ignored. The one exception was when _he_ spoke; father, daddy, poppa, Trip...he that came across the water and descended from the sky whose head soared even higher up above mother's and whose great stride was like thunder. When father spoke to him, he knew even when he did not call his name. He always felt the same from mother too, but he would not always respond until she used his proper appellation. The awe he experienced for father who would appear and disappear without reason or explanation supplanted everything, even when father was gone far away, up in the sky or across the water he could feel the warm radiating feelings like the great warm blanket that lay on the place where mother and father lay down at night.

From mother he could feel the dull itch, her hands closed into fists resting on the hips he liked to cling too, the denial of preferred saddle by angrily formed hands meaning she did not approve of his moment of defiance. Mother had other special titles as well, ones only father used and when said he could feel the warm blanket from mother; darlin', sugar-bottom, baby, sexy. When father said these words the tips of mother's ears would take on the color of the stuff that grew on the ground outside. Mother's ears were different from father's, which was strange to him as when he pawed at his own ears to determine their makeup he felt what he construed to be a structure similar to mother's. But all this introspection was unnecessary, he had made his decision that he would remain awake until father descended from the sky. It was late, and he was tired, but the prospect of seeing father who had been gone three sleep times seemed to supplant any feelings of physical exhaustion, besides, he had napped extra to make sure he could stay awake for father's return.

"Solan, it is time for bed."

With every ounce of conviction borne of the ancient knowledge of having roamed the earth eight whole months he once again brought the picture-tablet, clutched between his tiny fists down on the fuzzy floor cover, and with clear and resounding voice retorted, "No!"

T'Pol looked down at her recalcitrant offspring, understanding his longing to spend time with his father to whom he shared a peculiarly strong bond despite Trip's lack of latent telepathic ability. For the most part Solan was an almost ideal child, she had devoured any information or texts pertaining to human and Vulcan child rearing, almost predictably, there was a great dearth of information on Vulcan child development and parenting techniques perpetuating the almost counter-intuitive lack of formalized study of the phenomena of the Vulcan family. Humans, on the other hand, seemed to form an almost self-congratulatory cult following around the concept of child rearing with views and techniques as plentiful as they were disparate. The one thing they all seemed to agree upon was that their technique worked...but not all the time...and not with all children, and that after reading the book and applying the techniques you might find that another strategy worked better. As in most things, humans were apologists, with each line of thought and theory of child rearing seeking to preemptively offer consolation to whatever group was "victimized" as part of the parenting process.

Some argued that emotionally stifling a child through discipline was the cardinal most sin parents were guilty of. Others insisted that discipline was necessary to ensure that a child didn't become a burden or detriment to society as a whole. Thousands of variations on a theme, millions of suggestions, and each with extensive scholarship on damage control and the possible failing of every alternative theory. One rather alarming and intriguing theory had been developed forty years prior as part of a longitudinal study of high augmentation level children, primarily those born of parents with modified MAOA augmentations. It found that while these children were capable of far more dangerous violent outbursts than their peers, they tended to be less prone to violence as the modified MAOA gene tended to trigger only during times of imminent threat or extreme emotional duress. Her sense of Vulcan curiosity prompted her to take Solan for a gene mapping procedure and was at once intrigued to learn that her son's genome did exhibit 44% system five genetic traits.

It was fortunate that their place in the media spotlight had died off by that point as any revelation about the augmentation level of his human genes would have likely brought out another round of speculative outrage. The memory of those days, weeks, and months immediately after giving birth brought on an involuntary shiver of rage in T'Pol; the vitriolic nature of the reaction to the news wasn't completely unexpected but the way in which it was directed filled her with the most defensive form of Vulcan anger she had ever experienced. She had mentally prepared herself for weeks prior to the birth for a xenophobic backlash from humans who suddenly saw the potential of the genetic purity in jeopardy, instead the anger of humanity was directed at her mate. There was still a strongly presented pseudo-isolationist movement on Earth centered largely in the halls of academia that perpetuated a narrative of human irresponsibility, racial immaturity, and the inherent corrupting and detrimental influence of humans on everything.

T'Pol had been confused and fascinated by the violently perpetrated almost fetishistic self-effacement drive. It ran contrary to everything she understood about humans, why a race of beings with as much to offer as humans did would insist on ensconcing a philosophy of racial self-mortification in the highest halls of academia was confusing to the point as to actually reach seductively intriguing. As it turned out, it was all an outgrowth of the Eugenics war and the corresponding social and political fallout in the wake of the conflict; the Alliance of Nations, the precursor of the United Earth Nations, had empowered the military under the aegis of the Alliance of Nations Defense Identity to do whatever was necessary to win the war against the augments. This decision on the part of AN and the actions of ANDI would forever set academia at odds with the military complex in a series of events that continued to color the attitudes of human philosophy to this very day.

Early in the tenure of the Augments' reign over large portions of Earth the "super men" were hailed in the halls of academia as the next phase of human evolution; they were lauded for their intelligence and physical prowess and their subjectively amoral relativist philosophy that fit in so well with much post-modernist thought. The haughty, pedagoguery of the augments manifested itself in a number of ways; the creation of the ultimate "nanny" state for select portions of the population went hand in hand with the virtual enslavement of massive swaths of the remaining population in countries where they came to power. There was no illusion of freedom, but the Augments deftly justified these moves as necessary for the "betterment of humanity", a euphemism for their own aggrandizement and the formation of their own demi-empires through out much of the Eastern Hemisphere. At the same time the intelligentsia, that had sung the early praises of the Augments and steadfastly defended even their most heinous acts as the cost of the advancement of humanity, were elevated in status in a move that mimicked the patronage system of Earth's past. The next twenty years of war were, by far, the bloodiest in human history, millions died as each side as the augments unleashed biological and chemical weapons against AN nations who, in turn, began unrestricted strategic bombing of the Augments' logistic and industrial infrastructure. The academic tone of the war took a massive shift with the augments striking against AN think tanks in an attempt to forestall the advancements of ANDI and, subsequently, killed off huge numbers of scientists and researchers who were developing new weapons systems and the GRAs. When the Augments finally fell, ANDI began a series of purges of collaborators, resulting in the summary execution of hundreds of Augment Sympathizers, many of them professors and academics in their own right.

These events had served to color the attitudes of academia towards the UEN Military and vice versa. The Augmentees and MCS became the biggest targets for criticism and debates about failed human policy. Some still viewed the Augments as the true heirs of humanity's legacy and viewed the GRAs as pale, inferior attempts to ape the perfection that was the Augment Human race. MCS was viewed as the culmination of the worst of human traits combined in an organization that sought dominion through paranoia and force of arms rather than actual superiority. To these groups, Aliens were viewed with almost sacred reverence, each race's foibles were excused as racial adaptations and born of pragmatic understanding of the larger universe even when the individual foibles were remarkably similar to vices among humans. When news broke that Charles Anthony Tucker III had impregnated a Vulcan and she had given birth to his child there were literally accusations of rape made by some widely respected academics. T'Pol had bristled at the very idea, her love for her mate was not for them to question or speculate upon, and the besmirching of his honor by suggesting he was anything but open with her was a mortal insult. Trip had seemed mostly confused and disheartened by the accusations, in an utterly irrational display of human susceptibility to "authority" persuasion he began to question whether he had not, indeed, raped T'Pol in a psychological sense of not so much the literal. It had taken several long heart to heart conversations, isolated from everyone for her to finally break that thought pattern and convince him that nothing could be further from the truth.

As with all things in a media cycle, especially one already primed to foment a conflict with the ever-hated MCS, things spiraled out of control. Ironically, a human isolationist group helped stoke the flames, pushing the idea that humanity should isolate and insulate itself. Terra Prime, as they were known, dumped millions into keeping the news fresh and the outrage flowing. Eventually the original nature of the indignity was lost and T'Pol, her mate, and her child became the target for anyone and everyone with a bone to pick, when the death threats started MCS stepped in, sending a platoon of armed marines to escort T'Les, T'Pol, and Solan to safety. It wasn't until Vulcans began to break their traditional silence about the nature of the Vulcan marriage and relationship process in interviews that the steam behind the movement began to die. The scrutiny was still present when it was finally deemed safe for T'Pol and Solan to return home. A section of Marines had been tasked with security and when they exited the vehicle a sea of reporters and protestors was arrayed outside the fence of the Satellite Beach bungalow. Trip was already standing on the porch and his expression when he saw them approaching up the path flanked by Marines was the kind of look one expected from a man who had just had a death sentence lifted from him. Over the previous weeks T'Pol had felt the muted hints of his anguish in the bond, the moment her eyes met his she felt all that pain rush out and away. Over the shouted questions, the hoots, and screamed insults Trip closed and when Solan looked up to see his father, a smile crossing his tiny face and his little hand coming up to grasp his father's nose, silence fell over the assembled hecklers and reporters.

The single image of a half human, half Vulcan baby smiling and grasping at his father and the human father lovingly kissing the top of the child's head seemed to drain all the anger, recrimination, indignity, and venom from the Trip Tucker Inquisition. Solan Tucker's celebrity was short lived and culminated in a pair of photographs which, save for the realization that he had to be ignorant of them, seemed to be going to his head if his current bout of defiance was any indicator.

"I know you wish to see your father, but it is well past the optimal time for you to retire." T'Pol declared in a conciliatory tone, instantly cursing herself for insisting on talking to the child on a level that his, admittedly precocious, young mind would not be able to understand.

"No sweepy." He insisted, blue eyes wide and pleading offsetting and better expressing his actual emotional state than the defiant set of his mouth.

T'Pol marveled that he had been able to divine her meaning, wondering if perhaps he had not sensed her intent through the child-parent bond. "Solan, your father will not be home for a while longer. When he arrives, I will be certain that he wakes you so that you may spend some time with him."

"I wif dadda?" His words, as always, were only slightly more intelligible than babbling, at seven months of age he was significantly advanced, he could form words and sentences but his pronunciation and grammar were, predictably, underdeveloped.

"When he returns home, until then you must sleep." She knelt down before her child, feeling an uncontrollable emotional desire to pick him up and hold him close, feeling his warm weight and inhaling his unique scent.

He nodded his head, the pales locks of golden brown hair framing his face bobbing softly. T'Pol took advantage of the opportunity, to hold him for the sake of holding him was an illogical emotional act, but to pick him up and hold him while taking him to his crib was perfectly reasonable and would not be construed by his young mind as anything other than a logical action.

Solan looked right in her eyes, his expression softening as if he knew what she was thinking then softly babbled, "I no teww." Then extending his arms said emphatically, "momma, hug."

It wasn't until he spoke that she felt his consciousness brushing against hers, something feeble and grasping, but also the most benignly calm thing she had ever experienced, almost as if he was still that perfect glowing sphere of light she first became aware of in her body consciousness sixteen months ago. She gave into the urge, the need, to hold her child close, tangibly expressing the love than she couldn't even fully understand on either a logical or emotional level. Her love for Trip, her mate, the one that had given her this gift, paled by comparison to the utterly overwhelming emotionality of the relationship between mother and child. She gathered the toddler into her arms, pulling him close and standing up as he assumed his familiar position nestled against her, tiny arms wrapping around her neck as the soft cheek and hair pressed against her ear. As she walked towards his room she began to softly sing an old Vulcan lullaby, one of the only things that could be identified as markedly tender in her people's culture. She knew he didn't understand the words despite her and Trip's attempt to introduce Vulcan into his vocabulary. Her mother had actually been the one to be certain that Solan's first language would be English, using it to the exclusion of anything else in his presence and scolding T'Pol and Elaine Tucker on several occasions for trying to encourage him to speak Vulcan.

"If Solan chooses to learn what it is to be Vulcan he can undertake that journey when he decides too. There is no need nor logic in placing additional stressors on the child to be both human and Vulcan."

She had actually been shocked by the declaration on the part of her mother, but not nearly as much as Elaine who had seemed thoroughly cowed by T'Les, treating her with the sort of deference that would traditionally be reserved for Royalty. T'Pol found the attitude strange on the part of her mother, the steadfast insistence that the child be able to choose for himself was completely contradictory to what was expected of a Vulcan child by Vulcan parents, self determination existed in as far as one could determine where their skill set lay and whether or not to pursue it. T'Pol had wondered at the time if it was not some subtle racism on the part of her mother, believing that a half human Vulcan child would never be capable of suppressing his or her emotions or learning the discipline of Vulcan society. Trip's father had actually been the one to broach the question, sparing both T'Pol and Elaine from having to ask the question. His blunt, matter-of-fact way provided a strange level of insulation and protection from the matriarchal persona T'Les had cultivated in regards to her grandson. He openly challenged her on her perception of what was best for Solan, venturing the opinion that it was possible the child would exhibit more Vulcan than human traits as he matured.

T'Pol was growing gradually more and more certain that Charles Jr. enjoyed conflict and debate, the conversations with T'Les often became quite animated, the dueling lines of rhetoric rolling forth as both tried to find some position of superiority from which to argue their point. The advantage the Tucker patriarch had was that he never raised his voice, never seemed outwardly emotional, the very thing that her mother had counted on from the human was no-where to be found. The longer the debate went, the more calm he would become, speaking slower and more precisely like he was some sort of anticipatory kolinahru. The debates had almost become a nightly fixture while they had stayed with the Tucker's following the evacuation of the Satellite Beach home after the first string of death threats.

Ah, yes, the death threats. It was the first time she witnessed Trip "going fivey" in person. His face had shifted from emotional and mental duress to a blank expression marked by pupillary miosis and drawn lips as he stormed into the bedroom and grabbed the civilian model MAR-12 he had purchased a week earlier and converted to Marine/Naval combat specifications. All the emotions of aggression, fear, and frustration disappeared and all she could sense through the bond was a kind of cold purpose and violent resolve that was outwardly directed with the most deadly kind of purpose. Sensations and memories of the Shadow Trip were reawakened as she felt the familiar emotional response as everything was instantly dropped in favor of genetically driven awareness and barely contained hyper-aggression. Fortunately the Marine lieutenant in charge of the security detail had dissuaded Trip from seeking a potential assailant in the crowd around the house. The young officer had seemed outwardly confident but T'Pol had been able to smell the fear response hormones in the human officer when he realized he had a experienced veteran high genetic consistency system five augmentee having a modified MAOA response right in front of him.

After their return to their home, Trip had insisted T'Pol learn to operate the weapons he kept in their house, particularly the M-2052 handgun that he was so proficient with. She would have been far more comfortable with a phaser but unfortunately they were still illegal for civilian ownership in the UEN so she was forced to adapt to the loud, smelly weapon. Strangely enough she found basic marksmanship training to provide its own measurable reward system. The pride her mate experienced as her groupings grew gradually smaller and smaller was reassuring, the flush of emotion was warming and pleasant even as he remained outwardly stoic while he instructed her on improving her technique. Over the course of two weeks they had spent six afternoons at a local outdoor firing range honing her proficiency with the weapons. There were situations where she felt as though he was showing off a little for her benefit; his ability to rapidly acquire and place precision fire on target was a marvel too her. His genetic predisposition towards warfare was readily apparent during these sessions as he set a bar that was nearly impossible for her to reach trying to match him round for round, shot for shot.

One of the patrons at the range had witnessed T'Pol reloading the Springfield 2052 on the second day of training and expressed the belief that a "forty five is an awful lot of gun for such a little lady." Trip's expression was amused but his mental process had been less glib, projecting a single order to his wife, _Show this sonuvabitch_. The ear and eye protection she had been wearing effectively obscured her ears and eyebrows significantly well enough that she appeared to be a human, and while she was still petite, her Vulcan musculature had little problem taming the recoil of the 11.27mm Automatic cartridge. A pair of tightly group shots into the 10 ring of each of four targets in quick succession served to silence the patron's opinion. He managed to choke out an embarrassed, "Great shooting, ma'am" before ambling down to his shooting station where he shot very slowly and deliberately as to avoid drawing attention to himself.

Entering Solan's room she lay her child in the crib, prompting his closed eyes to open for a moment just to sink shut lazily as he rolled onto his side and took a deep breath. She continued the final verse of the lullaby as his tiny chest began to rise and sink in a slow, deep rhythm. She looked down at the infant before her, noting his features once again and entertaining a few moments speculation as to how he would mature physically. He was startling large at the time of birth, 3.65 kilograms and just slightly shy of a third of two thirds of a meter in length. He exhibited a number of his father's features; the eyes, hair, and complexion all suggested Tucker genes as did his uncharacteristically long arms and legs for a child his age, he was just shy of a meter tall now and while relatively slim by infant standards was still a respectable nine and a third kilos in weight. His musculature and bone density were sixty eight percent over human base line and twelve percent over Vulcan, from this it was relatively safe to say that he would be incredibly strong by the standards of either species when he reached maturity. With the exception of his moment of intractability he was an exceptionally well behaved infant and obedient almost to a fault, the one thing that would wake his instinct for defiance was anything pertaining to his father.

At four months of age he decided that he didn't like it when Trip would go for a run and not take him. Trip would always return sweaty, tired, and grinning after a good jog and the system five genetic adaptation that caused a release of endorphins and serotonin after physically strenuous activity. Solan seemed to think this was all some great fun and that his father should take him with him. It wasn't entirely that strange, Solan was willing to accept or endure just about anything to be near or with his father. This included such things as taking naps under the office desk, head resting on Trip's feet while he was working in the study or sitting and watching, utterly enraptured, while daddy was fixing something or maintaining the family's firearms. Trip typically ran with a weight vest and backpack loaded with a sand bag to ensure a significantly strenuous work out. Combat system augmentees could typically perform simple physical feats almost indefinitely, a run was not really exercise unless it was up-hill or weighted down. When she brought it up to her husband, T'Pol was surprised at the speedy reaction on his part, immediately ordering a child carrier mount to wear in place of his backpack so he could take his child with him on the run. The first excursion didn't exactly go as their son seemed to have expected. Despite the dutiful preperations of both mother and father, Solan had seemed to find the constant bouncing, heat, and bright sunlight of the run unpleasant and the very next time Trip prepared for his tri-weekly run, the child had made it abundantly clear he would rather stay home, as it was the family Sehlat had become Trip's jogging companion.

The creature was now just shy of a meter tall at the shoulder exhibiting the lankiness common among the creatures during their late-cub development. It's appearance still caused something of a stir among people who saw the creature, a fact Trip insisted was some ancestral genetic trait from the time when ancient humans existed alongside the indigenous earth smilidons. As she prepared to leave the room the creature in question slinked in the door and took his traditional place under the crib, lying down to provide overwatch for child it seemed to view as a younger sibling or offspring to ward against the unfamiliar. Charles Jr. seemed to take a liking to the animal, commenting on more than one occasion about the kind of trouble he could have gotten into if he had such a pet when growing up. When T'Pol had given Elaine Tucker an amused look she insisted that she had not known the Tucker patriarch then, but she had heard stories.

With the house finally quiet and temporarily devoid of tension she finally realized the built up tension in her muscles and joints. Even with the return of their bond to the strength it had exhibited just prior to the attack on Vulcan by the Romulans, she found it had been doing very little to help her process stress. Trip had been blocking her quite extensively since the construction process of the _Tirpitz_ had entered it's main and final stages. What did manage to get past his barriers was his near constant state of frustration with the project. Traditionally the process of prototype ship construction was overseen by dozens of supervisors with the project head all but absent from the day-to-day vagaries of the build process. Trip, as both engineer and creator of the design specification, was fully immersed in every stage of the project. Everything from hitches in the supply request process, personnel assignment, implementation, and system quality inspection was under his direct supervision and while he could delegate a certain amount of responsibility, as the final say on all issues he still had to be privy to just about everything that was done on the massive warship. His typical routine now had him at LeGrange 2 three days, one day at Canaveral, back to the L2 station two days, then usually a day at either Baruun Urt, Detroit, or San Francisco before heading back to the orbital dock at L2 again for two to three days.

An evening's session of neuropressure would likely be supremely beneficial for both of them, and she resolved herself to ensure that they would be able to spend the intimate time together...providing their son didn't monopolize his father until they were both too tired to enjoy a moment of marital privacy.

* * *

><p>"Colonel Shelby," T'Pau softly intoned his title as she walked up to the lounge chair in which the broken officer lay. She knew he could not understand what she was saying, but he did respond to the sound and he seemed to acknowledge that the words referred to him. The damage to his brain had centered mostly on the left hemisphere and while not catastrophic, his Broca's and Wernicke's areas had been damaged beyond the capacity for practical repair. He could no longer understand language in any form, he no longer attempted to speak or even to make sounds and the frustration at not being able to express thoughts was such that he would occasionally snap.<p>

T'Pau had first witnessed one of these events when she received a call from the nurse she employed to look after the Colonel while she attended to her duties as minister. Her voice had been clearly distressed, something that caused not small measure of concern in T'Pau who had hired the elder Vulcan on recommendations stating that she was incredibly calm and had extensive experience in dealing with non-Vulcans. When she arrived at the house she had purchased to act as the Colonel's home the nurse, V'Kara was waiting outside, cautioning T'Pau to not attempt to approach the violently agitated human until he could be sedated. She disregarded the warning, somehow knowing that the Colonel would not harm her. Entering the house she was immediately greeted by the gaping holes in the walls and a smashed table. A flash out of the corner of her eye caused her to spin on her heel just in time to see the wild eyed Shelby, blood running down his forearm looming over her. She didn't move, just looked up into his face and softly spoke his first name. His eyes immediately averted, as they had when he was still whole and he sank to his knees, wiping angry, frustrated tears from his eyes.

Since that even she had made certain to visit him at the very least several times a week if not every day, sometimes remaining in the guest room over the night, other times remaining in the house for several days when her station didn't require her to attend to her duties in Shi'kahr. His episodes of rage had tapered off sharply, usually limited to going into the courtyard and venting the frustration of a rock obelisk that T'Pau had found a calming meditation focus. In a strange way, it had the same effect on Shelby, but for different reasons as he was often very sedate after pounding away on the rock structure with fists and feet.

She felt some concern over the fact that he was losing weight and seemed to be showing no signs of ceasing the slow atrophy. She would have to consult with one of the doctors at Camp Kelly to find out what, if anything, could be done about it. When he had first awoken from the coma both the human and Vulcan doctors had tried to caution her that it was entirely possible that his body could simply shut down at any point, the number of possible complications from his injuries were too numerous for them to list but they all more or less agreed that he was slowly dying, it was just impossible to say how slowly. One of the human doctors, Major Stephen Curtis, took her aside after the other doctors left and told her that the one medicine that would serve to best ensure something resembling a recovery of his physical health would be something to live for. She didn't understand his meaning exactly, but she assumed that providing the Colonel with friendship and closeness would serve to help.

She stepped around to stand in front of him, the heat of the late afternoon being slightly eased by the occasional gust of wind rolling in from Thanar Sea. He moved his face to be directed towards her, but kept his eyes averted.

"I have often wondered why you cannot look me in the eyes. Among humans such behavior is often construed as a feeling of guilt of lack of character on the part of the individual who cannot make eye contact, but I suspect you have other reasons." She knew she would not get anything resembling a response, but he seemed to react positively when she spoke to him.

"V'Kara informs me you went for a walk today, it is agreeable to see that you are feeling well enough to engage in light physical activity. Perhaps it would be prudent to provide you with some exercise equipment."

He opened his mouth, as if trying to form a word or sound, stopping when his brain was unable to query a working understanding of language and had slapped his right temple with the heel of his palm and shrugged, his face frustrated and ashamed. She could almost feel the tumult of emotion coming from him as tried desperately to make parts of his neuro-physiology work that no longer could work.

She reached down, placing a hand on his wrist to keep him from striking himself again and in hopes of preventing another breakdown, "Colonel, I understand your frustration, just rest."

She felt him relax but her touch telepathy was immediately overwhelmed by crippling feelings of tension and emotional duress. She forced herself to maintain the contact as recoiling, which she instinctively wanted to do, would further confused the man and perhaps make him believe she was disgusted by him. In point of fact she was experiencing pronounced and illogical feelings of sympathy and moral anguish for the human she still harbored unresolved emotions for. After a few moments he closed his eyes and leaned back in the lounger again. She didn't leave his side immediately waiting for the first sign to indicate he had fallen asleep to rise. At least in dreams his world may still make something resembling sense as the brain simplified and streamlined information to reflect his inability to understand one of the very foundations of sentience anymore.

Entering from the courtyard she found V'Kara preparing bowls of plomeek broth and gaspar. Immediately T'Pau wondered if perhaps the diet of Vulcan fare was contributing to his physical degradation. Humans were known to embraced vegetarianism and veganism in some situations, but as far as she knew virtually all of the Marines that served at Camp Kelly consumed flesh, eggs, and dairy byproducts all of which were directly linked to muscle formation and maintenance in the species. She was relatively certain V'Kara would not approve of the process of handling or preparing meat which would mean she would have to do so or employ a V'tosh Ka'tur who would not be opposed to the proposition.

"Have you noted the level of tension in the Colonel?" T'Pau inquired of the nurse.

"His level of stress is hyper elevated, I have yet to determine a routine or regimen that will serve to alleviate this." The older female replied.

T'Pau wasn't certain if her next question was practical or even proper, but her concern for his well being demanded it. "Do you think he would benefit from neuropressure?"

V'Kara arched a brow, "I am not certain how a human would react to neuropressure, I cannot think of a precedent, I am fairly certain, however, that you would be hard pressed to find an individual willing to perform treatments on mister Shelby."

"You would be opposed to doing so?"

"I would not be comfortable with doing so." She replied evenly, showing no sign of indignity but still quite emphatic.

"It was my understanding that you were an attached female, the risk of forming any sort of bond with the Colonel does not exist."

"I was not aware it was possible for a Vulcan to form a bond with a human at all." V'Kara replied her voice tinged with measures of skepticism and curiosity.

T'Pau weighed her next words, not knowing whether it was proper to reveal the information. News of the birth of the first half human, half Vulcan child had reached their world, the details were deliberately suppressed in interest of privacy and while rumors prevailed nothing had been confirmed beyond reasonable doubt and the high command ordered the active suppression of media coming in from Earth.

"It has occurred, I have confirmed this myself, the circumstances for such an event are unique though."

V'Kara seemed taken aback, "Surely you do not mean that the Colonel and..."

"No, that is not the case." T'Pau laced her fingers together, "You have heard of the birth of a Vulcan-human hybrid, correct?"

"Yes, I had heard of this, I had assumed it was created through in vitro fertilization."

"The child was conceived during Plak Tow," She weighed her next words and decided in the interest of the Colonel's health it was worth offering a little more information, "The father was human, he is bonded to the mother."

"Fascinating...that does not, however, change my unwillingness to attempt neuropressure on mister Shelby. While his capacity to express himself verbally has been altered, I do not believe his other basic biological reactions have been impaired."

"I do not understand."

V'Kara arched a brow, it was an unsavory topic for a Vulcan, "Humans, arouse very easily. I do not feel it would be proper to touch him in a way that his body may construe as sexual and as a wife and mother I would not agree to doing so outside of my family unit."

"I am not certain there is any particular logic in your objection, but it does conform to the traditional practices of our people."

"You could always perform the process." The nurse ventured matter-of-factly.

"I am an unattached female." T'Pau countered quickly, feeling a strange and inexplicable flush in her ears and across the back of her neck.

V'Kara arched a skeptical brow, "You are a Kolinahru, are you not?"

"I have achieved Kolinahr, yes." The heat wasn't subsiding.

"You are not currently displaying the associated traits." The elder Vulcaness once against stated with biting candor, "If you will permit and observation...?"

T'Pau half nodded, she almost feared what would be said, but perhaps it would reveal a logic she hadn't considered.

"In your position the likelihood any bond you form will serve as anything other than a means for slaking pon farr for either you or your mate is remote. The demands on your time would prevent the necessary year of isolation and would be unfair on your potential mate." V'Kara set the bowls of soup on the table, "I also suspect your affections are directed towards mister Shelby."

"Kolinahru do not experience affection." T'Pau replied quickly.

"Then perhaps you have not truly achieved Kolinahr."

T'Pau was silent, there was more than some validity in the observation, issues to consider from a practical stance. She would have to meditate on this matter, "I will consider your words. For now I must return to Shi'kahr. Peace and long life."

V'Kara formed the ta'al, "Live long and prosper, minister."

* * *

><p>T'Pol rolled off Trip to his right side, her head coming to rest on his bicep as she sucked in a greedy breath of air to lungs demanding more oxygen for muscles still screaming for anything to prevent the buildup of more lactic acid. The neuropressure, almost predictably and, perhaps, by design had spiraled out of control. While performing the fourth posture, working the nodes in her abdomen she had started to lose her composure, her breathes coming deeper and faster than was appropriate and while she fought to keep the feelings hidden and stifled, her mate could read it on her as surely as if it had been literally written upon her. When calloused fingers slid slowly and carefully between her legs she lost her ability to maintain any semblance of composure any longer.<p>

It had been fortunate that Solan had been more tired than he thought he was. The extent of his ability to spend time with his father was to wake up, hug Trip and then laying back in the crib held onto his father's fingers until he felt back asleep a few minutes later. Trip stood dutifully and patiently over the crib, smiling down at his son as the child's eyelids, heavy with sleep kept slowly drifting shut. Still clad in his dirty and NWUs, Trip leaned into the crib and whispered softly to his son, "Go ahead and get some sleep buddy, I'll be all yours tomorrow."

Solan's voice, squeaky and constricted with exhaustion echoed forth in his babble speech that only the trained ear would detect as actual words, "Dadda home?"

"I'll be home all day."

With a snuffling squeak he replied, still clutching the big callused fingers, "kay..."

When the neuropressure session began Trip had been discussing the fact that he would be meeting the commander of the Marine detail for the _Tirpitz_ in three days, even in his moments of relaxation he was thinking about duty, a fact that, perhaps helped explain his constantly high level of stress. He had not seemed like the same Trip ever since Shi'kahr, a documentary movie released two months prior had done much to explain why. The film was a Russian language release comprised largely of camera footage, interviews with Marines and Vulcans who had been privy to the fighting in Shi'kahr, and news footage. The Director, Igor Yegorov, provided much of the narration which was subtitled for international release. The interviews and helmet cam footage was almost exclusively in English and showcased the brutality of fighting in all its uncensored fury. A soundtrack heavily punctuated with old Russian patriotic hymns gave the documentary, at times, an almost theatricality that forced the viewer to forget that all these events had occurred less than two years prior. What had began as a film many assumed would be a damnation of MCS turned out to be a love letter as he, through the course of the film, painted the Marines and Sailors who drove off the Romulan invasion as selfless, endlessly brave, sadly misunderstood and tortured heroes.

Trip and T'Pol had both been invited for a viewing in San Francisco by the MCS admiralty days after Trip's promotion to Captain had been finalized. Less than a third of the way into the movie Trip had risen from his seat and moved to leave, "I can't watch this" was all he whispered to T'Pol as he left the theatre. There were a number of scenes so graphic she could not help but look away, and one scene in particular that continued to haunt her she saw the tell-tale black helmet and body armor of her mate directing post-contact recovery and fire placement at the main gate of Camp Kelly. Piles of Romulan dead littering the fields adjacent too and roads leading up to the MAC-V command base. It was now abundantly clear as to why he never spoke of the fighting or what had happened, it was clearly too painful a memory. There were snatches of memory brought on by mentioning the Fleet Marine Detachment commander that had, mercifully been alleviated by the session and those emotions had quickly been supplanted by a subtly burning desire that had eventually turned into a raging flame.

T'Pol lay still against her mate's arm, trying to relax her body, while she had felt a tremendous release from the vigorous sex moments before, she realized it had in effect undone some of the effects of the neuropressure. The idea of pre and post-coital neuropressure seemed illogical, so it was best that she just relax her body and see if some of the anticipatory muscle tension would relax on its own. The arm on which she rested pulled inward, as his powerful left hand clamped onto the naked skin of her hip pulling her into his body, the sensation of his bare flesh on her back and his nose burying itself into the side of her neck eliciting a hissing sigh of satisfaction. The work and war roughened left hand traced, just barely touching her skin, down her abdomen and across her hips to stroke her left thigh.

"God, I've missed this..." He whispered.

T'Pol snaked her left arm back to return the caress and spoke with supreme skepticism as was often her way, "Sex or spending time with your mate?"

"Can't it be both?"

T'Pol had found herself wondering more than once if her mate was having problems finding her desirable still, even after the birth the sexual component of their relationship had been all but non-existent. The last time had been five months prior, the time before that had been seven months, sex once over the course of a year would not have seemed to incredibly strange when they were both on _Enterprise_ but she found the act pleasant, agreeable, dare she even think it...enjoyable. She had, more than once as a matter of fact, wondered how Trip with his naturally higher upkeep requirements was managing when she, herself, had found the sexual frustration a strain. That was when a distinctly illogical emotion took hold; self-doubt, fear. She began to wonder if he was not conducting an affair, seeking sexual release elsewhere; she was quick to dismiss this concept as he was always present in the bond even when he was blocking her emotionally, she could always "hear" the pulse of his emotions just behind the barriers. Rationally she knew his fidelity was beyond reproach, but some irrational part of her still wondered.

She rolled over to look at him, arching a skeptical brow as she pressed her body against his, "I am not sure it can."

His lips made his reply, kissing along her jaw and down her neck, "We could forego the sex for another eight months if ya want."

Very well, he had called her bluff, "I most certainly do not."

"Might have'ta darlin'...first sortie is a six month shakedown." He replied, running fingers gently up and down her spine.

"There is nothing to prevent us from engaging in sexual behavior up to your time of departure." She insisted softly.

His lips latched gently on her shoulder and clavicle forcing another pleasured sigh from her, it was becoming clear that he was preparing for a second round, a possibility she was more than willing to entertain, but she was driven by a dogmatic need to finish the conversation. "The relative proximity separation will be trying on both of us, the ability to sense one another without being able to be physically near or imminently capable of being so will test our bond heavily."

His lips ceased their probing and he lifted his head to look in her eyes, "Darlin'...we're not gonna be doin' runs up and down the trade corridor...we're gettin' tossed over to the front."

T'Pol didn't know whether she should feel alarmed or relieved; at that distance their ability to sense one another in the bond would basically amount to sensing if they were still there at all, at the same time it also meant they could not feel one another's affection or rely on one another for strength . She tried to force the thought from her mind only to have it replaced again with the same self-doubt she had experienced during these months where the fire had seemed to go out of their relationship.

"I had...worried...that you no longer found me attractive." It was a hard confession to make, but she had to alleviate any doubt he would sense from her in the bond.

"Baby, you're the most beautiful thing in the world of me, hasn't even been anything more beautiful."

She felt a strange urge to test the assertion, some strange instinctive territoriality rearing its head, "And the princess Kaitaama...?"

"Oh Lord...look, that was a fling...besides at that point you looked at me most of the time more like somethin' you wanted to scrape off your boot than anything!"

"So you did have sexual relations with her." Her tone was less than amicable.

"It's really not polite to discuss that." Trip deflected, his body suddenly becoming quite rigid with tension.

"Was the sex gratifying?"

"I'm not discussin' this..."

"Better than me?" It was a calculated question, the human tendency to try to gratify or ingratiate themselves to their current lover could cause them to reveal details they would normally avoid mentioning in the process of reassuring their partner.

"No, hell no...she was actually kind of lousy..." Trip caught himself, screwing his face into an expression of subtle disapproval at the naked Vulcan wrapped in his arms. "That's cheatin', darlin'."

"Liana?" She arched a brow.

"What the hell is this?" He was starting to get angry, what the hell did it matter what happened before they were together?

"Did you have sexual relations with Liana?"

"No, no I didn't, I never laid a finger on her." Trip replied in a flustered tone.

"But you were attracted to her, were you not?"

"She was kind of cute, I think mostly she just reminded me of a girl I knew when I was like...twelve or somethin'."

"Ah'len?"

He sighed, "I told you, the captain, and the XO at the time, I was a perfect gentleman, never laid a hand on her."

T'Pol could feel his irritation, anger at being confronted like this while they were in such an intimate setting, wondering why the interrogation was occurring, of all times, after a bout of love making. Still, this was an opportunity to determine the degree to which she should trust her mate; would his feelings change after the interrogation of a rather private nature? In all her times of pushing his buttons, probing for a reaction she had never produced a decidedly negative or violent response in him, it remained to be seen if she would be able to do so this time.

"Did you find her attractive?"

She felt something in him snap, a bizarre emotional disconnect, as if his brain was, itself, aware that the emotional response he was experiencing did not coincide with the expected result of her verbal prods. She couldn't isolate what emotions were occurring in him but there was something almost chillingly calm and calculated about it.

"As lizards go she was pretty damn good lookin'."

She cocked a brow, moving to the next in the barrage, certain this one, if no other, would elicit and definitive response other than moderate agitation. "What about you and Amanda Cole?"

"Hmmm..." He moved his head close, sniffing at her hair, "Sounds to me like you're a little jealous."

She felt the blood rushing to the tips of her ears and the back of her neck, uncertain if she was experiencing frustration or...perhaps...desire? "I don't experience jealousy."

He moved his head closer to her ears, invading the unspoken demilitarized zone that lay between him as she asked her battery of questions, "You're doin' a pretty fair imitation of it."

T'Pol brought her hands up as a temporary ward to prevent his body from drawing any closer. His scent was suddenly maddeningly enticing, and the heat of his skin and breath against her was straining the limits of her territorial indignity. "I am not, in any way, jealous of any of your previous...relationships."

Her attempts to hold him at bay failed as he simply overpowered her, pulling himself closer and nipping at her ear lobe, "Ya know, your voice is tensin' up, it's a dead give-away."

"I..." She let out a single huffing gasp of a breath as his left hand came down to stroke the back of her upper-right thigh, "didn't know you were an expert in vocal inflections."

"I don't need to be an expert to read you." With that he brought the left hand around to test his theory, fingers pressing to the most tender spot of her inner thigh. There was a moment of resistance, stubborn Vulcan pride not willing to acknowledge what he had already sensed from her. After a moment she permitted the intruding fingers access to the tender skin that seemed to beg for touch. He shifted again, his lips hovering inches above hers, if he was to judge on the basis of her expression he would assume she had forgotten the line of conversations entirely. Without warning she grabbed his head pulling his mouth into hers, holding the passionate lip-bruising kiss until the phalange recon-element found its objective, forcing a long groaning sight of pleasure from the, now, thoroughly flushed Vulcan. Her hands came up, grabbing a hold of his arms, shoulders, head, trying to find some purchase to steady herself and determining any grip insufficient to provide balance and help her find her center.

"What just happened?" He already knew, her logic had gotten ahead of her emotions again, she couldn't figure out the proper context of territoriality; rather than looking inward and taking and owning what she already had, she decided to focus on anything outside that had once used what belonged to her. Maybe with enough time she would finally figure it out, until then all he could do was endure the onslaught until he recognized it for what it was and proceeded to disarm her with good old-fashioned, illogical, passion.

"Round two...?" She breathed.

"Ding ding..." Reaching over he turned off the lamp, the dark doing nothing to obscure the grin on his face.


	30. Chapter 30

"Mister Reed, set primary firing solutions to the lead enemy frigate, let it have it with everything we've got." Archer bellowed over the sound of ruptured atmospheric system pipes and warning alarms.

"EPS systems are blown to everything but our aft weapons systems, sir!" Reed shouted back over the din.

Archer heard the words as if they were a death sentence, which, for all practical purposes, they were; his blunder was going to cost the lives of everyone on _Enterprise_. No, he couldn't accept the idea, nothing he had done was wrong, everything had been by the book and justified. Sending the _Sao Paolo_, _Knoxville_, and _Clifton Sprauge_ out after the incursion contact had been the correct decision, scans had shown no signs of other belligerents in the area, nothing to indicate that fourteen Romulan warships were lying in wait to separate the task group. The _Bindura_ had been crippled immediately, leaking atmosphere with it's power plant completely offline, _Enterprise_ had managed to cripple one of the Romulan ships and destroy another before the massed firepower destroyed the shield relays and gutted half the ships EPS system.

"Miss Sato, general distress call to any ships in the area, we are under attack and in need of assistance, repeat message." Hernandez ordered in a voice that was still strangely calm.

"Aye, ma'am! To any friendly ship in the area, this is CGX zero one, Enterprise, we are under attack and in need of assistance, repeat, we are under attack and in need of assistance."

Archer looked over to Hernandez, she was standing in place, trying to calmly analyze the situation as blood began to soak her Utility Uniform, the liquid a muddy burgundy shade against the gray fabric.

"Bridge to engineering," Archer shouted into the intercom.

"Engineering, Kelby here." Came the bellowing reply.

"Tell me you can give me warp..."

"If you can give me six minutes I can get you Warp one, but not much better than that."

"I need warp four at least!"

Kelby's reply sounded defeated, almost desperate, "Captain, sir...we blew out ninety percent of our EPS relays when you told us to dump everything into shields. When the shields blew, we lost everything."

"Figure something out!"

"We'll try sir, but half my people are injured or dead."

The words hit Archer like a freight train, his sensor officer was likely dead, God only knew how many others on the ship were dead, how many sections had decompressed. And then there was Erika, too much blood to be a minor injury. Of course it probably wouldn't matter in a few minutes, they'd all be dead, unless a friendly ship responded there would be no reason to bother ordering the crew to abandon ship, the Romulans would likely kill anyone they captured. He looked over to Hernandez, her knees were starting to buckle and she was leaning heavily on the arm of the XO's command couch. She met his eyes for a moment and he softly mouthed the words, "I'm sorry." She smiled at him for a moment, weakly, then collapsed , her torso still upright and she still was conscious, but the blood loss leaving her to weak to stand.

"Mister Mayweather, bring us about, if we're going down we can at least go down shooting." Archer declared, preparing to accept the inevitable.

"Sir, we're getting an MCS signal." Hoshi cried in surprise.

"Let's hear it!"

The crackling and modulated tones of the signal coming through their damaged communications systems caused a sudden lurch of dueling hope and dread in the pit of Archer's stomach. "Enterprise, this is USS Tirpitz, time to intercept three zero seconds, hold fast, how copy? Over."

"We copy Tirpitz, be advised, there are one two hostile craft in vicinity, over."

There was a moments pause, and the same male voice replied, "Roger that, Enterprise, duly noted, should not be an issue. Over."

Reed straightened from his fire control console indignantly, "Shouldn't be an issue?"

Archer thought he could see a ray of light at the end of the tunnel now, at the very least this Tirpritz, whatever it was, might serve to beat back some of the already damaged Romulan ships and give them a new target long enough for the three ships he'd sent off to make it back and turn the tide of battle. "Bridge to engineering, Kelby, can you give us anything to aft hull plating, forget giving us warp, we just need to last another minute, we've got relief inbound."

"Maybe fifteen percent, sir." Kelby replied, shouting over the blare of alarms in engineering, the sound of venting gasses, and the screams of the injured and shouts of the scrambling crewmen.

"Better than nothing, give me hull plating." Archer ordered.

"Aye, sir."

"Mister Reed!"

"Trying to get a target lock, sir, the fire control systems are all shot." The Briton replied.

Archer walked over to the science station, it was all but burned out by a power surge, Lieutenant Cuyler was clearly dead, the arc flash had blown off much of his right hand and carbonized most of his face, any chance of accessing the main sensor array to locate _Tirpitz_ was out of the question. He allowed himself a strangely calm moment of consideration, what was the _Tirpitz_ and why had he never heard of it? As far as he knew all the CG class boats could be accounted for, there weren't any scheduled to be completed for at least another six months.

"Sir, Tirpitz is requesting any targeting telemetry we can provide." Hoshi intoned.

"We've got bingo sensors and fire-control is shot to hell, tell them we can't relay telemetry at this time."

"Aye, sir. Tirpitz, this is Enterprise, we cannot relay telemetry at this time, our sensor system and fire control is damaged, how copy?" Hoshi nodded at the reply, "Roger, roger that, Tirpitz, we will comply, over." Hoshi looked up from her console, "Sir, Tirpitz advises we displace to coordinates three zero zero niner five one to clear their firing lane."

"Do it, Travis." Archer ordered.

The navigator nodded, "Aye sir, setting course to three zero zero, niner five one."

Archer watched the main screen as a vanguard of four of the Romulan ships formed up for the killing blow. He wondered if it was perhaps poetic justice for the Romulans that died over Vulcan that they would finish off _Enterprise_ before their relief force was able to rescue them. He kept waiting for the disruptor shots that would finish it all but none came, instead dozens of bright white-hot streaks speared into the four lead ships, the tell-tale contrails of friction fire and smoke signaling rail-gun fire. The bridge shook as everything was momentarily eclipsed by massive dagger shaped hull projections and the familiar round saucer of an MCS warship, only this was bigger than any MCS ship in existence, the saucer bore the white fluted black letters BB-01 U.S.S. Tirpitz. The set of six massive impulse engines were producing enough thrust that their wake shook the CGX type missile cruiser as it passed over.

From each of the two large upper dagger-hulls and the two lower, a battery of phase cannons began ripping into the Romulan warships that had held back. Each of the long projected super-structures lashed out with a pair of long solid beams of energy and a shower of darts from pulsed phase canons, melting huge gashes into the hapless Romulan craft. The MCS behemoth roared past at speeds that seemed utterly improbable given it's size, releasing another flurry of rail-gun fire from aft batteries savaging the already foundering vanguard ships. Based on the size of the white streaks of super heated osmiridium Archer had to conclude the munitions were much larger than the standard model mounted on the cruisers and destroyers. Why hadn't he heard about this monstrosity? He watched in silent awe as the _Tirpitz_ lashed out with phaser batteries again, ripping one of the Romulan ships in half and shattering the nacelles of another. The four remaining ships opened fire with disruptor banks only to watch the energy fizzle against the shields of the larger more heavily armed warship. The monstrous MCS ship rewarded the efforts of the flattened ships by laying into them with phase cannon batteries, ripping huge gouges of armor and hull plating away.

After seeing what they were up against it became clear that they were utterly outclassed prompting several of the Romulan commanders to decide discretion was the better part of valor and bring their ships about, trying to put some space between them and their assailant so they could go to warp. Instead of pursuing, the _Tirpitz_ wheeled around, crippling two more Romulan ships that were attempting to limp away with phase cannons and took up a defensive position above _Enterprise_. Silence punctuated the bridge, the realization of how close to death they had all been didn't seem to be setting in while the awe of what they just witnessed still held primacy.

"Bloody hell..." Malcolm voiced softly.

"Enterprise, this is Tirpitz, heave to and prepare to receive repair crews and medical personnel." The voice crackled over the damaged bridge speakers.

"Understood, Tirpitz, we will comply." Hoshi replied.

Archer staggered back a step, wanting to collapse in his command couch, a sudden feeling of nausea and exhaustion washing over him.

To his left Hernandez made a wheezing sound, "Thank God..."

"Reed, you have the conn." Archer barked abruptly as he dashed over to his XO, helping her to her feet, leaning heavily against him as he bee-lined for the turbolift.

"What about Cuyler?" Erika inquired, the every dutiful XO.

"He's gone." Archer replied in a soft voice, trying to fight back the feeling of distress at how many lives he had lost today.

* * *

><p>Captain Archer staggered slowly down the corridor trying to reconcile the toll of it, the cost not just in terms of credits; the damage would run into the millions to repair and the MCS survivor benefit amounted to five hundred thousand for a dead marine or sailor, or lives lost; twenty seven dead and thirty two wounded, or strategic concern; they would have to be pulled off the line, but rather in the terms of the emotional toll. He knew what he was feeling, a great weight of dread and regret like he was responsible, as sure as if he had been the one commanding the Romulan ships himself, he had caused this. Erika had suffered a series of shrapnel wounds, catching a majority of the spall that would have struck him if she hadn't been there when the science station went up.<p>

When they had docked with the _Tirpitz_, teams of corpsman and marines with stretchers were already waiting at the gantry and rushed aboard the ship to begin hunting for and treating casualties. The damage repair teams followed immediately, all clad in fleet issue NWU with ballistic/energy vests and helmets instead of the more common utilities still worn on most ships. Archer had no idea how many people would have to be on a ship that size but at least fifty crewmen and twenty seven marines had flooded into _Enterprise_ to assist with the damage and casualties. He approached the gantry passing a pair of Hayes' marines and made his way to the opposite end of the walkway where a pair of _Tirpitz's_ marines stood watch.

"Permission to come aboard."

One of the marines reached up and activated a communicator mounted on his load bearing equipment. "Starboard hatch to CIC, over."

"CIC here, send traffic."

"CO, Enterprise, requests permission to board, over."

There was a pause, the young marine was stony faced, his gear pristine but showing clear signs of being well fitted and used. After a moment he noticed the jump wings and combat diver badges sewn to the uniform. A patch on the back left side of his helmet depicted a cowled samurai in armor holding what appeared to be a trident. He glanced over to the other marine and noted the same fixtures including the addition of a combat deployment badge, master marksman badge, and a combat jump device on his jump wings. It was growing clear to Archer that the ship had been staffed with war in mind, from the marines guarding the hatch to the damage repair teams that were scrambling like worker ants over the interior of _Enterprise_ sealing leaks, replacing EPS relays, and fixing damaged systems before they could fail catastrophically.

"Starboard hatch, permission granted, please direct Enterprise CO to the turbolift, the old man would like to see him in the CIC, over." The voice from the communicator finally replied.

"Roger that, Starboard hatch, out." The young marine replied, he was little more than a boy, mid 20s at the oldest with strong angular features full lips and incredibly dark African complexion. His vocal patterns suggested North American, particularly the southern states, some kid from the south joining the marines, it was nothing new, but this young man was clearly a cut above the average marine as indicated not only be the certification devices on his uniform but also by his stony discipline. "If you will follow me, sir, I will lead you to the Turbolift."

"Lead the way," Archer looked for a rank device, spotting the black threaded device stuck to the front of his body armor on a velcro patch, two chevrons over a pair of crossed rifles, "corporal."

"Aye, sir."

The marine fell out of his position and began walking down the corridor. Archer immediately noted how much more austere it was than the interior of _Enterprise_, as they reached the junction of the corridor he noticed a pair of large holes with a reinforcement collar at the corners. It was odd, there didn't seam to be a plausible explanation for the structures, it wasn't as if they could be used to sluice away fluids as the reinforcement collars extended a good two centimeters from the deck plating.

"What are these holes for?"

"Positions for crew-served weapon, emplacements, sir."

He couldn't help but think how much they could have used something like that in the expanse, the corridors seemed narrower as well, something that would force and enemy boarding force to bunch up, rendering them combat ineffective without proper training for entry procedure. As they continued down the corridor he noticed more of the floor-sockets, mostly emplaced at the corners of intersecting corridors. He began to wonder if every deck had similar fighting positions, the idea was novel, make a boarding action pay for every inch they progressed in the ship. It was almost a natural evolutions of Reed's hide-and-seek, hunter-killer ship defense doctrine, perhaps Malcolm had submitted an essay on the tactics he had used to such great effect in the expanse.

The ship was martial through and through, everything rendered utilitarian and optimized for battled. The few crew members he saw were all clad in body armor and helmets, one of the senior enlisted crewmen with a sidearm strapped to his right thigh. Deck, section, and sub section was labeled to expedite reaction in a damage control, security, or combat situation. There was never any intention for this ship to be involved in diplomacy, it was created to bring the fight to an enemy and nothing else. As they approached the ubiquitously inset turbo-lift, a section of marines in full combat gear squeeze past and proceeded down the narrow corridor. They stopped dead in their tracks as the ship's intercom squawked.

"Now hear this, now hear this, this is the XO, stand down from general quarters, all clear. Repeat, stand down from general quarters, all clear. That is all."

Archer could detect the hint of an accent that stubbornly persisted as a sort of tacit national or ethnic pride despite the clear and easy mastery of English in the speaker. The marines a little way down the corridor all removed their helmets and pulled soft-covers from the front of their jackets under the plate carrier and thermo-ballistic body armor vests, placing them on their heads and slinging arms. Archer once against noticed each had jump wings and on the back of the helmet the same patch of the samurai wielding a trident.

"How many marines do you have on this boat?" Archer inquired.

"Three hundred seventy eight total sir; second platoon, delta company second battalion first fleet marine force and fifth battalion, second Marine Special Operations Regiment."

"Fifth Battalion?"

"Aye, sir, there are three hundred thirty six of us. Full special forces battalion." The corporal replied.

"You're not fleet marine force?" Archer was shocked.

"No, sir. the FMF platoon is on board for security of delicate locations, MARSOC is detailed with repelling boarders or performing boarding actions." His reply was flat, almost disinterested, it was a matter of fact to him, not a source of pride or ego, just the facts, sir. "The turbolift will take you to deck one, sir. The Security detail will allow you admittance to the CIC."

Archer nodded, stepping into the lift, it was larger than _Enterprise's_, a clear sign it had been designed with the transport of large numbers of persons or material in mind. From what he could tell from the view screen images, _Tirpitz_ was twice the size of the CG/X series of cruisers, he wasn't entirely sure this wasn't some secret one-off force multiplier ship designed to have a fleet built around it. It could signal that MCS was preparing to settle the Romulan issue once and for all, leading a massive first-strike group to cripple the capacity of the so-called Romulan Empire to make war by gutting their industrial and technological infrastructure. He was almost certain that the CIC would contain at least one of the Admiralty board and probably A. G. Robinson in command. When the turbo-lift opened he was greeted with the sight of a two fleet marines in MCUU and the red and yellow MP brassards standing at east outside a heavy pressure style hatch.

Archer stepped forward, "Captain Jonathan Archer, requesting permission to enter the CIC."

One of the marines turned and punched a code into the door, both had side arms and thermo-ballistic vest sans the plate-carrier and a slung MAR-12 each. Unlike the other marines he had encountered, neither had a helmet both wearing the 8 point soft covers that were standard as part of the uniform. The door slid open and the marine who entered the code stood aside, allowing Archer through. From outside he could see that the room was packed with electronics, dozens of view screens, scores of consoles and input devices, all dominated by a large holographic projection tank in the center. It was completely different from the _Enterprise's_ bridge or the bridge of any other ship he had seen. As he crossed the threshold and into the room, a fleet marine MP entered his name his name into a PADD and produced a badge for Archer to clip on his NSUU's breast pocket. As he looked around he saw some of the personnel crossing to arms lockers, hanging the compact special forces style black helmets and thermo-ballistic armor on the provided hooks. It was a brilliant idea, while it likely would not have saved some crewman like Lieutenant Cuyler, there were probably a good twelve people in his sickbay and nine in the impromptu bay-three morgue that likely wouldn't be if they had been issued thermo-ballistic vests and helmets.

"Captain Archer." The accented voice he heard over the intercom caught his attention and he turned to look into the face of the ship's XO. He had a strong jaw line and a pronounced cleft in his chin, the relatively slender yet pronounced nose, dark hair, bronze complexion, and striking eyes clearly illustrating either Arabic or Persian descent. He extended a hand, "Commander Nassir Al-Sistani, welcome aboard, sir."

Archer took the hand, it was a very firm grip, almost aggressively so, in contradiction to the genuine and easy smile on his face. He'd heard mention of this officer before, commander of a Destroyer and acting head of a task group, a smart but aggressive attack boat captain who'd racked up more than his fair share of Romulan ships due to his consistently aggressive combat posture and almost preternatural capacity to read a situation before it had begun to develop; if _Tirpitz_ was here to kill Romulans, there wasn't much better a choice for XO.

"If you hadn't shown up..." Archer felt the words die in his throat, catching on strangling emotions the very thought conjured.

"I suppose you'll want to see the skipper." Al-Sistani declared, allowing Archer an easy out, perhaps understanding the agony of losing people under one's command.

"If he's not to busy."

The commander chuckled, "He makes work for himself, I'm kind of hoping you might distract him long enough that maybe he'll realize he needs some sleep."

"Sounds familiar...my former chief engineer was the same way." Archer groused.

As they approached the holotank, weaving through the display screens and duty stations they saw a single marine in full combat gear sans helmet standing next to a man in NWU, sleeves rolled up to the elbow and thermo-electric armor vest with front and rear plate carrier pockets. The marine himself bore the high-and-tight haircut of an enlisted man, but his bearing, the look painted across his eastern Asiatic features, and his seeming position of exclusivity among those present on the bridge labeled him as an officer and, likely, commander of the MARSOC battalion.

"I don't know captain...I think you might have gone a little nuts with that railgun constructive load... Massive over-expenditure of ordnance." The marine officer declared, a hint of a smirk on his face, the embroidered name patch and rank insignia stuck to the high-necked multi-plate thermo-ballistic body armor indicating that this was Major Musashibo.

A familiar voice rang out in reply, "Would you have preferred to lean out an airlock and shot them yourself, major?"

"You just utterly ruined my punch line, sir." The marine countered, the smirk spreading almost involuntarily.

"Oh, you've got jokes now, huh?"

Commander Al-Sistani closed the distance adding his own quip, "Anything to keep from hearing another of yours, skipper."

The twang was unmistakable, "My jokes ain't that bad...have you ever heard Forrest when he's got one too many in the tank?"

The XO grinned, then spoke, "Captain Archer of the Enterprise is here to see you, sir."

Archer's jaw almost dropped when the commanding officer turned, confirming what his ears had been telling his brain but he somehow could not reconcile. Right there, in the flesh, the last soul he expected to see out here. The fact it was him almost made him glad, he felt like he had some things left unsaid.

"Cap'n." Captain Charles "Trip" Tucker said with a nod.

* * *

><p>"How bad was it for the Bindura?" Mayweather asked in the quiet way he did whenever something bothered him emotionally.<p>

Reed arched his brows shaking his head, "Somehow...they got everyone clear of the hull breaches, they had minimal life support but save for some injuries, some of them pretty severe, they didn't lose a soul."

"At least there's that." Mayweather almost whispered. His unique personality was usually so upbeat, positive, he was the kind of person that could cure just about anyone of a bad mood, but his lows went into dark places that most would fear to ever look into. It was almost as if he was Bipolar, and when tragedy struck his ability to quantify and process the event failed entirely sending him into a downward spiral of depression.

Malcolm was, himself, just refusing to think about it, any of it. This was just the nature of war, people died, if he could keep it at that level of impersonality then he could function. He didn't want to know who died or how, weeks or months down the road he could find out the hard and awkward way after it was no longer fresh and pertinent. At that point he could solve all the clumsy emotional issues with liquor. He reached down, picking up one of the ration packs, shrimp Florentine, Travis' favorite. With one quick move he ripped open the plastic packing and handed the self-heating tray to Mayweather.

"You should eat something, mate, you'll feel better."

"Thanks Malcolm." Travis squeezed the top of the container and gave it a few good shakes before peeling it open, the smells of the pasta wafting up into his nose on tendrils of steam, "Damn, I don't know how they make this so good."

"You've got me...I think its probably the single most awful thing imaginable. Who wants seafood with pasta?" Reed tore into his ration package, meatloaf was his favorite, a fact he unabashedly admitted too when most seemed to balk at it. Truth was it was only partially meatloaf. Oats, flax, and whole wheat was used as an emulsifier and provided bulk, only 75% of the actual serving was meat, soy made up another fifteen percent with the grains and a few hints of bell pepper and onion rounding it out.

"Says the guy eating the meatloaf..." Travis chuckled jabbing a fork into his meal and twirling the pasta around the fork.

"Not everyone can have good taste, I was just gifted." The Briton replied with his patent straight-faced snark.

The galley had been appropriated for the personnel from the _U.S.S. Bindura_, it was cramped, but given that all of Hayes' marines were currently setting up hammocks in Cargo bay 4, the sick-bay was overflowing and twenty seven unfortunate crewmen were going to have to deal with the task of boxing up the possession of the twenty seven corpses that were currently stored in bay three. The crew would be on rations for a few days at least, it was something Reed felt he could contend with, part of the cost of still being alive. Malcolm leaned back against the enlarged dorsal rail gun magazine Kelby had modified a year back to double the number of rounds that could be stored. In many ways the new chief engineer had proven to be as splendid as Trip Tucker had been. He didn't think quite as far outside the box, but he had figured out dozens of ways to improve existing systems without completely turning the engineering manual on its head.

"Up ladder..." A voice echoed up from below, unmistakably Hoshi's, "Up ladder!"

The metallic click of her boots on the rungs heralded her ascent as she climbed up into the battery, when her head cleared the top of the deck she looked up to see Malcolm and Travis both looking towards the ladder in anticipation of her arrival. With the damage _Enterprise_ sustained it was abundantly clear they would be heading back to Earth, maybe, just maybe, they could all three request leave and get to visit Trip and T'Pol. They had found out through the media coverage about them staying in Florida and had seen the pictures of their infant son, but Hoshi had expressed a pronounced desire to hold him, herself. As she cleared the ladder her expression was excited, almost irrationally so.

"You guys will never believe what I just heard." She began.

Reed interjected, "Sit down, I've got you chicken souvlaki." He held up the ration pack as Hoshi found a spot against one of the replenishment flexies that was attached to the magazine in place of the feed flexies when I was time to refill the ammunition storage device. She hastily ripped open the package, popping the four corners on the entree to start the heating process, and setting the container down on the deck.

"Guess who I just heard is in command of the Tirptiz."

Malcolm did his best skeptical face, Hoshi was the compiler of scuttlebutt, often enough the disseminator, but she never relayed information she hadn't corroborated herself, the fact she had stipulated that she "had heard" it meant she had not done so yet. "Who did you hear it from?"

"Arroyo in engineering said she overheard one of the Tirpitz damage control guys saying it to Kelby."

"So a second hand version of a third party conversation...mathematically that makes this story how plausible exactly?" Reed sniped.

"Well, then I heard the same thing from Whitney who overheard one of the Corpsman talking to Staff Sergeant Cummings." She countered.

"And you heard it from each one separately?" Travis joined in, it was one of the big factors toward corroborating the story; if two people heard the same thing from different people the likelihood there was a grain of truth was upped. Accuracy and plausibility were major factors in the scuttlebutt dynamic and being around Hoshi had turned them all into sticklers for the facts.

"That's right." Hoshi had a smug expression, a slightly scolding edge present in the smirk that seemed to ask who they thought they were talking too. She was, after all, the master of rumor, innuendo, and guess-what-I-heard. She had been able to create self perpetuating rumors, start disinformation campaigns, and eek out truths that nobody was aware of just through the process of collecting, seemingly unrelated, information minutia.

"Alright, what is it?" Reed inquired breaking the silence produced by Sato's long pause.

"Oh no, you didn't believe I got my facts in order, I'm not going to tell you now." She retorted with measure indignity, pulling the top off her ration entree and sliding a fork into the Greek dish.

Reed quickly applied his standard-approach reverse psychology, if there was one thing Hoshi could never stand it was being dismissed, so with a shrug he dug his fork back into the meatloaf, "Okay, fine."

He began the mental countdown, starting from ten as he calmly chewed. He suspected he might get a minus 3 before Hoshi cracked, so he was rather surprised when just after the four count she blurted out, "I'm going to tell you anyways."

Reed visibly shifted, giving Sato his undivided attention, a slight smirk on his face as Travis did the same. Hoshi paused, looking from Reed to Mayweather then back again, finally grasping what had just occurred, she had fallen into the same trap again.

"You guys are assholes...seriously."

Malcolm chuckled as Hoshi had her moment of indignation, glaring at them both and shaking her head. It only lasted a moment before the enthusiasm over her latest bit of gossip once again took hold.

"Okay, so here's the story. So I heard this from Arroyo; she was helping gut some of the blow EPS manifolds and one of the chiefs over from Tirpitz was talking to Kelby. He said the guy was discussing repairs with Kelby when he said, 'you know, your old boss is wondering how you've been doing.' She didn't hear the rest because someone fired up a saw and it drowned everything out, but that seemed kind of odd. 'Old boss' should mean former chief engineer right? So anyway, then petty officer Whitney told me about what he heard. So one of the corpsman and two of the Tirpitz marines noticed staff sergeant Cummings and one of them said, 'Hey, weren't you at Shi'kahr during the invasion,' and of course Cummings is like 'yeah'. And one of the marines says 'major Musashibo sends his regards.' Small world right?"

Mayweather interjected, "Who is major Musashibo?"

Reed replied hoping to hear the rest of the story development because so far nothing seemed to be going anywhere, "Probably Musashibo Benkei, he was am infantry captain with the macvee detachment, real hard charger."

"Well here is where it gets really interesting." Hoshi leaned in close, as if it was some secret that could only be whispered among co-conspirators, "Then the corpsman turns to one of the other marines and says 'he's one of the ones that jumped in with the skipper'. You two know what that means, right?"

"Nope, not a clue." Travis replied without compunction.

"I'm not connecting the dots here either, Hoshi." Malcolm admitted with a little more chagrin.

"It's Trip!" She declared in equal parts adulation and utter shock at their incapacity to figure it out on their own.

"What...?" Malcolm almost dropped the fork, "The commanding officer of the Tirpitz..."

"It has to be Trip, it all adds up." Hoshi replied, a smile creeping across her face.

"All adds up except for the part where they put an engineer in charge of a battle ship." Reed countered, the protest in his voice clear, it seemed an inconceivable idea; putting Trip Tucker in charge of a warship, it was impossible to fathom.

"What's so weird about it? Trip's seen more action than just about any two people on the ship combined." Hoshi rebutted, a frown replacing the smile.

"Hoshi...he fought ground engagements, small unit actions at best, it's completely different from commanding a warship."

"Shi'kahr?" Hoshi looked him in the eyes challengingly.

"Alright, that's a bit different..." Reed contemplated with a grumble, then elevating his chin became firmly defiant "But I refuse to believe he is the proper material to captain a warship."

"Why?" Travis couldn't help but ask, Malcolm's assertion, his insistence was strange and while not totally out of character for the often stubborn Englishman, it seemed odd that he would be so diametrically opposed to the idea that a man he had considered a friend would be capable of command.

"What do you mean, why?" Reed retorted, his posture and behavior beginning to indicate he was feeling ganged-up on.

"Why don't you think Commander-"

"Captain-" Hoshi interrupted.

"Captain Tucker...why don't you think he could command a boat?" Travis' tone was serious, as if he found something genuinely insulting about the allegation.

"Well...because..." Malcolm couldn't word it properly, couldn't even discern what would lead him to believe Trip would be incapable beyond just being Trip, "because...it's Trip."

"So we should file that under no logical reason." Hoshi quipped, digging her fork into the souvlaki again.

Malcolm sighed, tossing his hands in the air in a defeated shrug, "Alright, I don't know why...I just have a hard time seeing it."

"We might could go over and check." Travis offered.

"Captain Archer is already over there, maybe we can find out from him when he gets back." The communications/electronic warfare officer replied before sticking a bite of lunch in her mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

"You know..." Malcolm said, perking up slightly, "Maybe he'll have some pictures..."

Both junior officers looked at Reed with a confused expression, not totally certain what kind of pictures he was referring too.

"Of the baby..." Malcolm clarified.

Mayweather looked back and forth between his two confederates and grinned wide, the melancholy gone now and replaced with his almost child-like enthusiasm. "He'd better."

* * *

><p>"Y'all are gonna have to head back, no gettin' around it Cap'n, there's no way in hell you'll be in fightin' trim." Trip paused, pacing down the corridor, the thermo-ballistic vest had been put in a locker as had the helmet, but he still had the M-52 strapped to his thigh and without the body armor the NWU fatigues displayed the naval master parachutist's, EOD, Naval Engineer, Command Ashore, and Combat Action badges. It was another stark reminder of their differences in background, a realization that the boy he knew was now a man he didn't. It was emotionally painful to consider it all, to look at Trip as someone he had, in all honesty, lost track of ten years ago.<p>

"See these cracks here?" Tucker held his hand up high on the wall of the corridor, a faint discoloration only a hair's breadth, next to his extended digits.

"Barely." Jonathan admitted, squinting in the poor lighting.

"Get closer. It runs..." He lowered his hand, running to down the wall then crouching to point at the floor, "all the way through the corridor, it'sa torsion fracture. Chance's are you've gotta dozen of 'em through out this deck and the ones above'n below."

"How's that possible? We weren't even hit in this section?" Archer protested.

"You didn't have to be, this is basic physics, what happens when somethin' strikes on part of the ship?"

"The ship rebounds." Archer replied, not feeling about getting into a basic mechanics lesson right now.

"But does it all rebound at the same rate, at the same time?" Trip arched his brows.

"Oh..." Archer suddenly understood why his former engineer had deigned the refresher course necessary. "But how does this happen, these ships are supposed to be engineered to withstand this kind of punishment?"

"Lowest bidder work dynamic. Don't replace what ain't broken or doesn't look broken. Even when they do a molecular bond number on superficial damage it's only a stop-gap fix. Honestly, they needed to gut the ol' girl after we got back from the Expanse and replaced half the super structure." Trip spoke in a low tone, running a hand along the corridor's surface.

"Damnit." Archer folded his arms across his chest, "I want payback... How much can you get us patched up out here? I want to follow you in."

Tucker stepped in front of Archer, "Are you out of you gaw'dang mind? You're down a third of your crew, your XO is laid up, you're in a broke-dick missile boat, and you just had to get hoisted out of an ass-kick you were 'bout to lose!"

He clenched his jaw at the verbal assault, ready to retort, feebly, but retort none the less but Trip didn't allow him a second to formulate a reply.

"'Sides, you've got twen'y seven boys and girls down in bay three that need to go home so we can put 'em in the ground proper like, they deserve that much." The former engineer's voice was much softer this time; reverence for the dead, respect for the departed, it didn't really matter which, he was right...and Archer knew it.

"Fourteen of them, fourteen ships...fourteen."

"Keep it bottled up...if this is an indicator, you're gonna need it, every bit of it before this war's over." Trip answered, his voice almost hinting at compassion, a fact Archer was all but overlooking as his own anger at himself and the enemy seethed.

"Hell of a raw deal for you though, Trip."

"Well, I 'spose if they're sendin' you to a front for your shakedown, it's just a fancy way of sayin' 'take our new toy to war'."

"Speaking of toys, how many of those monsters are they planning on building?" Archer inquired, shaking his head in marvel at the abilities of the warship.

"They've already laid in the keel for Iowa and Royal Oak, they'll probably be done year after next. Kirishima, Scharnhorst, Missouri, Texas, Prinz Eugen, and Temeraire are approved but probably won't start bein' worked on until 59 at the earliest."

"They have captains lined up for them already?" Archer inquired, hoping the hint was subtle enough to go unnoticed.

"You got me...I just designed the thing, I have no idea who they want captainin' those boats."

"It's a nice ship." Archer mused.

Trip snorted in reply, "Yeah, if you've got someone who needs their hind parts handed to 'em. No creature comforts on the boat at all, keeps the crew angry, then you just set us loose like a lil pitbull on whoever you want torn up. No way in hell you'd want to cap'n one of these John...we don't even have a chef."

It was almost like talking to the old Trip again, but the child was really gone now, it was a man to man talk. Archer noticed he didn't feel that subtle fear anymore, the barely palpable threat that was Trip Tucker, war fighter. He wasn't sure their relationship would ever normalize completely again, but at least know he could feel that Trip no longer hated him, and that was a step in the right direction.

"How's T'Pol?" Jonathan asked, wanting some sort of confirmation that he was on good terms with his former engineer again.

"Well, she wasn't too pleased when she found out I was gettin' sortied to the Romulan border in an untried ship."

"Oh, what did she say?" Archer inquired with a grin.

"I wouldn't dare repeat it...in either language." His revelation that he would be sortied to the Romulan front had, at first, elicited little response from T'Pol, distracted as they were by post-coital bliss, then the post-coital argument, then the requisite post-post-coital-argument-coitus. The next morning she had decided to take issue with the fact in a rather animated fashion.

"Trouble in paradise?" Archer grimaced.

Trip grinned remembering, "Not really, Vulcans think make-up sex is logical."

Enterprise's captain brought a hand up to his forehead, covering his eyes, "I didn't need that in my head...thanks." He paused while Tucker chuckled, then lowering his hand met his former engineer's eyes, "Do they really...?"

Trip shrugged, "She does."

Archer suddenly had a flashback of the thermographic image from T'Pol's quarters seventeen months prior, and decided it would be prudent to change the subject as he began to feel the twinges of jealousy he thought he had moved past. "How's the baby?"

At this question Archer watched something he'd never seen in Trip before. He leaned back against the bulkhead, his face suddenly very calm with a kind of subtly euphoric smile, he looked utterly peaceful at the mention of his child. "He's somethin' else...precocious little guy."

"I saw the..." Archer almost stopped himself, but decided it would be easier to just get it out in the open, rather than turn the whole thing into a game of twenty questions, "pictures of when he tried to give you the rhinoplasty."

Tucker grinned his expression growing far-off and ecstatic, "Yeah..."

He reached into the right breast pocket on the NWU blouse pulling out a picture, handing the AMOLED still-frame across to Archer. "There he is."

Archer looked at the picture, its significance clear as Tucker seemed to carry it everywhere with him. It was taken in front of the porch of the Florida Bungalow, in the center T'Pol stood holding the child, a short sleeve pale blue shirt and gray fitted slacks illustrating that her figure had defied the effects of childbirth. Her hair was a little longer and clearly a few shades lighter, lightly tousled by the ocean breeze. Her expression was as impassive as usual, in the same picture a human female would be expected to at least fake a smile, but for T'Pol, such an act would seem frighteningly out of place. T'Pol's arms were extended outwards, supporting her son who was perched on her left hip. The child himself had the same lanky limbs Archer remembered having once seen baby pictures of Trip; the hair, elements of the face, the subtly knowing look on the face and the twinkle of mischief in the blue eyes were such a perfect match for Trip Tucker that for a moment he began to wonder if perhaps the picture was not of a much younger T'Pol with a baby Trip. A weird thought that perhaps there was some bond between them that extended back that far, that Trip and T'Pol had, in a strange way, fallen in love with each other when he was still an infant. He almost wanted to ask but he noticed the upward cant of the eyebrows and the point of one tiny ear and knew.

This was it, the real thing, staring at history; human and Vulcan, both at the same time and neither; Solan Tucker a boy that would have a hard time ever being able to measure up to the significance of his birth. Archer felt a strange sense of sympathy for the child, knowing he would always endure far more scrutiny than was fair or right for a child to be subjected too. Part of him started to wonder if he'd ever be able to meet this child, watch him grow and progress, watch him evolve from a smart-beyond-his-years kid into a certified genius. Archer hoped that fate would spare the child the same kind of life as his father; Trip had become a hard man in his own right, the kind that never truly reverted to their old self courtesy of the practicalities of war.

"He's something else Trip." Archer allowed a melancholy smile, his voice choked with emotion.

"He's already walkin' and talkin', and let me tell you, he wasn't to pleased with the prospect of me bein' gone that long, either."

"You know who would love to see this?" Archer got a mischievous look in his eye.

"Who's that?" Trip asked with a half grin.

"Everyone on the ship who didn't get to say goodbye when you slipped off in the dead of the night." Archer smirked devilishly, the idea of a little payback suddenly seeming incredibly sweet.

"Oh lord...you're about to co-opt me... Be advised, Archer, I still have a boat to captain so I can do a victory lap or two but I'm gonna have to get back to the job."

Jonathan shrugged, "Good enough, I figure with the repairs it'll be a few days before we can get underway to Earth, anyway. Besides, seeing you again might actually be good for morale, knowing it was Trip Tucker who saved their asses."

"Again." Trip smirked.

"Okay, yeah...again." The elder officer groused, prompting a chuckle from his former subordinate.


	31. Chapter 31

"Who's it gonna be...who's it gonna be..." Trip watched the LIDAR screen intently as the five Romulan ships raced for the polar magnetic field of the Jovian planet 648,000 kilometers ahead. If they could get into the electromagnetic field they could cloak and sneak away while the sensors on the MCS ships tried to cut through the interference. Despite their best attempts to escape Trip knew that firing solutions for the railguns could be easily calculated to slow or disable them before they got clear. Attempts to evade the hyper-velocity projectiles would force them change course, and so doing would allow _Tirpitz_ to close the range enough to bring the phaser batteries to bear. The question right now was which of the ships would be the one they would spare, his designs on this group of Romulan Frigates was to capture one of the ships intact, use the transporters and docking arm to put marines on her, and neutralize the crew before they could scrub their computers or sabotage their cloaking device.

The Romulans had learned a few tricks over the months of near constant confrontations with MCS warships, most of them only served as a means for escape and survival. Offensively they had learned only one thing; massive numbers seemed to be their single trick as was evidenced by their attack on the Enterprise two weeks earlier. Even if they had been able to mass significant enough forces to conduct such an ambush on the battleship, they would likely be detected before they could position themselves for the attack. The massive deflector on _Tirpitz_ served as more than just navigational aid, the radio telescopes slaved to the 38 meter dish allowed precision scans with up to 1 millimeter of detail at ranges of 3.85 million kilometers. At ranges of up to three light-years they could correctly identify shape and mass of individual targets and out to 15 light years they could detect individual craft by their power plant output. With this ability _Tirpitz_ was able to not only gain early warning of any inbound craft, it allowed them to stalk prey and prepare for combat before the enemy craft were even aware they were in the sector. In the event combat occurred the battleship was more than prepared. When combat began the direct forward firepower available would most likely be able to cripple four of the Romulan ships in the first pass, and the shields would be able to absorb more punishment than any number less than 6 would be able to dish out at a time.

The biggest threat to shields wasn't the direct feedback, it was the over-capacitating effects of energy flowing into the system with nowhere to go the same time the feedback was occurring. If there was nowhere for the excess power to go it could only take the path of lease resistance which was usually outward. With that in mind he created EPS traps, coils of effectively functionless EPS conduits that served only as a place for excess energy to collect in the event of feed-back surges. The end result was that nothing they had encountered yet had been able to push the layered shielding below 85%. The stunned response of Romulan skippers was first evident when they would stop shooting, maneuvering in an uncertain fashion, not sure whether to continue pressing the attack or to run.

"Lieutenant Chamberlain, lock the targeting solution for target Sierra five zero one five." Tucker barked, turning to see the missile command officer begin the targeting solution protocols, feeding the signature and relative data concerning the target's course, heading, and speed into to the fire control computers.

"Set deflection on gun battery three to plus five degrees, manual override, two round burst." Commander Al-Sistani ordered gunnery control, leaning over watching the orders being input into the respective FC computer, the figures entered quickly and run through the check-sum program confirming good numbers and plotting the new lead necessary to ensure proper deflection on the Romulan ships. He jerked his left hand up, fingers coiled into a tight fist, perpendicular to his body. Holding the outstretched fist for a matter of seconds as his eyes waited for confirmation and upon seeing it shot his thumb upwards.

"Mister Chamberlain, you are cleared to deploy ordnance." Tucker said evenly.

"Aye sir, solution locked, deploying ordnance."

Out of the starboard Photonic Torpedo launcher a single missile fired, a series of four sabot peddles coming away from the high velocity projectile. The payload was not designed to explode, rather to broadcast a constant ULF pulse _Tirpitz_ would be able to track once the ship cloaked. They would certainly feel the impact of the probe, so it was necessary to misdirect their attention. Trip watched as three fingers extended on Al-Sistani's hand counting down from four, finally closing the thumb he calmly intoned to the gun control station, "Two rounds, H E demil quick, fire."

"Aye sir, two rounds, H E quick. Firing."

A streaking of burning white rocketed out ahead of the _Tirpitz_, quickly overtaking the missile and continuing on its course towards the lead Romulan frigate. Half a second later the second round shot forth following the path of the first.

Trip stepped forward drawing close to the Electronic Warfare station, looking at the small LED screen providing the external camera feed in the cramped CIC, "Punch that up if you could, please, mister Gunderson."

The senior chief nodded, cranking up the magnification on the external optical telescopes. "Aye, sir."

Tucker took a step back, looking at the hull of the Romulan ship, the craft seemingly motionless against the backdrop of space. It was easy to forget at times that they were actually moving at all, much less at close to one tenth light speed while pushing full impulse. Trip had purposely set the inertial dampening on the bridge and CIC lower than normal to give the sensation of acceleration, being able to tell you were moving or pulling some serious Gs maneuvering, he felt, would help keep those manning the stations more on their toes. As he watched the first of the two railgun rounds struck the Romulan ship, impacting the hull and skidding along the surface before the demilitarization charge exploded. The second round struck a half second later having covered the 230 kilometer range difference between _Tirpitz_ and the enemy ship in just a little less than three seconds. It dug into the hull plating before the demilitarization charge detonated the osmiridium projectile leaving blackened scorching around the pockmark on the armor plating. A third of a second later the beacon struck, ripping another furrow into the hull before locking itself in place with a rapid hardening adhesive foam.

"Good contact..." Chief Gunderson declared, monitoring the signal output, "We're transmitting."

"Fantastic," Trip grunted, before nodding to his executive officer, "Light the rest of 'em up."

"Roger that." Nassir affirmed, raising his voice to relay orders to gunnery control, "Gunnery, batteries five, six, twelve and eighteen, lock targeting solutions on contacts Sierra five zero one one through Sierra five zero one four, negative eight degrees deflection. H E demil delay two seconds, fire for effect."

Toying with the demilitarization charges built into railgun munitions had become a standard procedure for warship commanders, it provided an additional, subtle layer of destructive capacity that could create unexpected surprises for an enemy. The charges were meant to ensure a stray round didn't turn into a future navigational hazard or city destroying kinetic kill weapons but in a pinch they could be used to increase the severity of a hull breach, in certain situations the heat created by impact was sufficient to partially seal the breach it created, in those events the demilitarization charge being set up re-opened the breach and, in some cases, made it larger.

Forty eight individual trails of flame and smoke immediately flashed out the gunnery console screens as the four heavy batteries launched the projectiles, the plastic sabots coming away roughly a half kilometer from the muzzle and rapidly losing velocity as the hyper-dense payloads shot away at one tenth light speed plus seventy seven kilometers per second. Trip watched the LIDAR screen as it tracked the projectiles inbound, before he could even make it to the mental three count he watched signal impact, two seconds later the demilitarization charges set off creating an atmospheric gas bloom as hull breaches opened on all four enemy frigates.

"That got their attention." Sistani declared as one of the Romulan frigates broke abruptly to port trying to clear the firing lane.

Trip kept his eyes on the LIDAR, almost expecting what was going to happen next as the Radio telescopic overlay began to detect hyper-excited particles beginning to trail the ship along with the atmospheric trace. "Mister Cooper, contact the Desmond Smith and Frank Merrill, instruct them to intercept and apprehend sierra five zero one two."

"Aye, sir." The young petty officer third class replied keying in the communications frequencies for the two frigates, "Raider two, raider four, instructions from raider actual, move to intercept contact designation sierra five zero one two, pacification and boarding action authorized, combat effective SOP, subdue by any means, how copy?"

The lighting on the bridge flickered a moment, dropping a few lumens before returning to normal as another salvo was fired from the railguns. Trip looked up at the lights furrowing his brows, arms folded across his chest, his consternation partially obscured by the brim of the thermo-ballistic helmet he wore. He looked over to Al-Sistani who stepped in closer.

Before Tucker could even prompt the executive officer commented, "Yeah, I saw it..."

"I'd better get 'em to double check that we're not drawin' power off the main-lines headin' to the guns for anything _but_ the guns." Trip grumbled.

"Well that's what a shake-down cruise is for." Nassir shrugged, they had become far to comfortable with these kinds of combat situations in the past few days. Twelve days earlier _Tirpitz_ and Task Group: Linebacker had crossed into Romulan space, radio telescopy had identified fourteen potential targets that seemed to be major Romulan industrial centers capable of producing armaments or directly involved in the production of their naval assets. Their objective, as it had been explained to them, was to cross into Romulan territory, locate, and then reduce as many of the strategic targets as was possible before returning to the MCS defensive cordon. Trip had asked for further amplification of what was expected in terms of time-table only to be told that re-supply would not be possible once they crossed into Romulan space. In short, it was an order to do as much damage as he could before they ran out of beans and bullets.

"Some shake-down. You get the feelin' they're mad at me about somethin'?"

"Can't imagine why..." Al-Sistani rolled his eyes stifling a smirk.

"Oh come on...just cause I'm the first guy to knock up a Vulcan..."

"Did she make you file the foreplay in triplicate?" The commander was grinning wide, that brightly toothy Iraqi smile that didn't know any shame.

Trip opened his mouth to retort, trying to conjure up something witty to say, each possible retort sounding somehow passé in the wake of Al-Sistani's zinger. "You know what...just for that I'm gonna make you pull a double shift tomorrow."

Nassir grinned wider, "Totally worth it, Captain."

Trip looked back at the LIDAR screen, the radio telescopy overlay indicating that two of the remaining Romulan frigates were also beginning to vent plasma from EPS ruptures. The lone enemy craft with the ULF beacon was closing on the magnetic pole of the Jovian planet and would, almost undoubtedly be cloaking any moment now, relying on the magnetic interference to confuse _Tirpitz's_ sensors, utterly oblivious to the fact that the ULF pulse from the attached beacon would relay it's exact coordinates to the battleship where it could cripple and board the craft at MCS's leisure.

"Mister Chamberlain, prep a mark seventeen, starfish, zero range proximity safety and stand by." Trip ordered then looked over to Major Musashibo, his equipment at the ready, just waiting for the order to commence boarding.

Tucker gave a nod to the Marine officer, "Better go get ready, it's gonna be any minute now."

Benkei gave the captain a predatory grin, "We'll get you that intact module this time, captain."

"I hope so, I've gotta case of bourbon for the first boarding action that manages to get me one."

* * *

><p>"The humans have taken to making war with the Romulans."<p>

"Let them bleed themselves dry fighting one another."

"No honor in defeating the weaklings then."

Goral looked over to Dhe'bekt and shook his head, his expression clearly illustrating his disgust at the blow-hards and braggarts that seemed to ubiquitously populate the drinking halls of every planet in the empire. Failures of every stripe, warrior egoists, lie weavers and blackguards; they always congregated in these places where their fellows or those desperate enough to hire on from the dregs of Klingon society would gather to revel in the scum of society. Any other time, a son of Lo'wahl would eschew such a location, but there was a good reason, or as good a reason as any for entering the den of scum today.

Goral began to fidget, the muscles in his jaw bunching and the veins in his temples beginning to throb noticeably. Dhe'bekt watched his younger brother, narrowing his eyes reprovingly, Goral had always been the hot head often getting himself into fights and, to his credit, winning them; but there was always a feeling of helplessness and shame afterwards. Goral loved a fight as much as any true Klingon, but he did not always mean to be the one instigating them. Dhe'bekt, of all of the sons of knew best how to reign in his tumultuous younger brother which was, perhaps, why their ships operated in tandem along the trade corridor their family warded.

"Their blood is unworthy of a blade of the house of Lo'wahl." The elder son rumbled.

Goral nodded, "Yes, brother."

"Kuhrd should have been here by now." Dhe'bekt groused, lifting his mug to survey it's contents.

"He was gone a full year, why would he insist on meeting us here first rather than immediately returning home, he has to pass Ganalda to reach Qo'nos." Goral growled.

"He must have some reasoning." Dhe'bekt replied with his uniquely gruff form of calm.

"It was a fool's mission, I still find myself wondering why father agreed to it in the first place." Goral deprecated, up-ending his mug of warnog before bringing it down hard on the table.

"We have enjoyed good relations with the House of Toral, the case that was put before father offered our house a chance for material gain and prestige, he was wise to accept it." The elder of the two admonished, prompting Goral to being fidgeting again. Much like his father, Dhe'bekt was a strategist, always looking at the long view, trying to analyze all the options and potential repercussions of a decision or event. Lo'wahl had established his family by choosing to patrol a heavily pirated trade corridor, providing escort for freighters for a nominal fee and savagely attacking pirates, raiders, and slavers, taking their ships as prizes or confiscating their ill-gotten gains. The wealth of the family grew from these activities and from this he built the respectable fleet his house boasted. At present, five of the sons captained one of the house's ships with the exception of the youngest; Krapt.

Goral shrugged, "That's why I always leave the thinking to you."

"Kahless be praised..." Dhe'bekt heckled, draining his own mug of warnog, he looked up, preparing to turn to summon the server when he saw his eldest brother's form fill the entrance to the drinking hall.

Khurd struck a truly menacing silhouette, standing fully two meters tall and sporting the broad chest and shouldered physique of their father. Dhe'bekt rose from his seat, prompting Goral to turn and see his eldest brother striding into the hall. Dropping their mugs the two younger sons of Lo'wahl crossed to meet their returning eldest brother and embraced him.

"This must be a mistake...you don't look any older." Dhe'bekt quipped.

"A year of danger...crossing through uncharted space." Khurd let out a low gruff laugh. "It was a long trip, but hardly risky."

"Do you return with good news?" Goral inquired, grinning with barely contained enthusiasm.

"Indeed, Toral's foresight and father's ability to spot an opportunity will be our gain. An open trade route will bring us great wealth and empower the empire." The taller eldest son crowed.

Dhe'bekt's enthusiasm quickly drained away leaving the serious face he often wore, "Why did you insist on meeting on Qo'nos? You could have returned home and we would have seen you five days, why did you travel this far out of the way?"

"Did you think I had forgotten my brothers that had to endure the additional toil created by my departure?" Khurd smirked, "Where better to spend wealth than on Qo'nos? I have a hold full of goods from the qarDaSngan., and you are each allotted a share."

Goral grinned, nodding, "You honor us, brother."

"What of Krapt, how does he fair?" Dhe'bekt inquired.

Khurd furrowed his brow, "He was right behind me a minute..." He turned, looking out the door trying to determine where the youth had wandered off too but already suspecting he knew. A moment of scanning the throng of people wandering the massive plaza and he spied his brother, predictably flirting with a pair of females easily eight years his senior. Khurd shook his head, a grin tugging at the right corner of his mouth, Krapt was developing into a fine physical specimen of a warrior and his natural charm made him a favorite among females, including those that served in Khurd's crew.

Krapt had added a fifth of a meter in height and nearly thirty kilograms of muscle since the day they left Ganalda on the mission over a year ago. It was clear to Khurd that sixteen year old Krapt would likely end up taller than him and with an even more impressive physique, on thing, however, had not changed; he still had the almost effeminately boyish face and made no attempt at nurturing facial hair for a proper beard. That was perhaps his greatest asset when it came to seduction, everything about his demeanor seemed to eschew the warrior ideal while everything about his skill set seemed to embrace it. Krapt was easily the best wielder of a bat'leth Khurd had ever encountered, his strength rivaled a much more seasoned and experienced warrior, his reflexes were second to none, and his unwavering loyalty and devotion to duty was above reproach...when he wasn't slipping between another conquest's sheets anyway.

"Do you see him?" Goral asked, scanning the crowd.

Khurd grinned, Dhe'bekt was still likely looking for the sinewy youth Krapt had been when they left, certainly not expecting the well muscled warrior he had become. Khurd was relatively certain he was, in fact, taller than either Goral or Dhe'bekt now and he was certainly in better physical condition than either. Krapt had trained diligently during the long trek to the qarDaSngan's home world, honing not only his martial skills but also focusing intensely on his physique, seeking to bring it on par with his naturally sharp mind. For all his brashness and cavalier disregard when it came to dealing with those not part of the immediate family, Krapt had always shown nothing but deference to his siblings, a fact Khurd had not overlooked and had been able to note time and again during the fifteen month mission.

"You wouldn't recognize him, he's not the same little brother." Khurd replied, lifting his right hand and shoving his index and middle finger in the corners of his mouth he let out a shrill two note whistle. Krapt's head snapped to the side, making eye-contact with the eldest son of Lo'wahl and then turning back to the two enraptured females shrugged casually, speaking a few words then calmly and confidently began his, utterly atypical for a Klingon, confident saunter over to the entrance of the drinking hall.

Khurd looked back to Goral and Dhe'bekt, watching with subtle amusement as both began to slowly register that the approaching Klingon was their youngest brother and how much he had changed since they last saw him. It took them a moment to reconcile the shaved baby face, the clean angular jaw, and elaborately arranged top-knot, that could only be something Krapt would do, with the muscular mass of a body.

"Who is this and why does he have Krapt's head?" Dhe'bekt laughed.

Krapt's expression was subdued but seemed to indicate a fair amount of mirth and at the very lease, pleasure at being reunited with two of his older siblings. As usual he was verbally reserved, saying nothing and he shrugging helplessly in reply to his siblings who were still marveling at how much he had changed. The youngest son of Lo'wahl exhibited a strange sort of introversion that only ever seemed to manifest when dealing with his family. Krapt's ability to shoot of his mouth and get himself in trouble was only rivaled by his ability to settle it, usually through violence. Yet, when his brothers, mother, father, or sister were involved he was willing to absorb any amount of punishment or abuse or just good natured teasing without the slightest inkling of defiance.

Goral slapped hands on both of the muscular shoulders of his younger brother who was, indeed, taller than him now, "Look at you! This appearance suits you, brother! Not will ever be able to doubt he is a son of Lo'wahl!"

The church of the father; Lo'wahl was the high-priest, confessor, and god incarnate of his own cult of personality. His sons worshiped him not just because of his strength, cunning, and power...any of those traits would earn respect from any Klingon, but Lo'wahl was more than just those, he could display utterly uncharacteristic mercy, he routinely illustrated his wisdom, and more than anything he let his children know the great affection he had for them. With these traits he bought the loyalty of many faithful servants and earned the unquestioning adoration of his family. The name Lo'wahl was besmirched in many corners of the empire by those who envied his wealth and influence and scorned by those who saw his refusal to participate in the politics of the empire as laziness or apathy. Blinded by ambitions, many of the great houses of the Klingon people had forgotten their warrior roots when Klingon made war to protect homestead and enrich his family rather than for personal glory or political gain. Lo'wahl was an anachronism that few appreciated and most misunderstood and therefore feared.

Khurd secretly assumed that Toral's friendship with their house was as much a political move by the pragmatic house leader who saw in Lo'wahl an ally whose only concern was for the continued well being of his growing house. Toral's son, Duras, had completed his first tour on a warship alongside Khurd under one of Lo'wahl's old captains. Khurd had never been sure exactly what to make of Duras, in him he saw a Klingon who was flexible with honor and personally ambitious, he was never certain how much of this was organic to the young warrior and how much of it was a product of the highly competitive and, often, duplicitous environment of Imperial politics. If there was one thing Khurd was certain of about both Toral and Khurd, it was that they had developed a genuine affection for the House of Lo'wahl, the eldest son just wasn't entirely sure to what extent the house of Toral would be willing to sacrifice it if it was politically advantageous.

"Lo'wahl? So you are spawn of that coward?" The four brothers turned their heads to spy a rabble of filthy and besotted warriors, likely mercenaries looking to hire on with a raiding crew. It was entirely likely that they were criminals as most self respecting warriors would never allow themselves to present such a shoddy appearance.

Goral bristled noticeably, Dhe'bekt was about to restrain him when Krapt casually strode up their table, lifting their pitcher of bloodwine and pouring it out over the vulgarian then dropped the pitcher on the table with a clatter. Krapt's eyes were squinted and his face somewhere between amused and pitying. Before the warrior could rise and pull his d'k' tahg, Krapt had extended a hand in the direction of the main plaza in challenge.

"A warrior does not honor the challenge of a child, he disciplines the brat!" The ruffian replied, spitting and raving, his face reddened with rage.

"So, you are saying you are scared?" Krapt spoke softly, his voice very even and devoid of emotion.

"You dare call me a coward, child?" He pulled the knife, "I will open you up like a targ!"

Goral calmed noticeably as he, Khurd and Dhe'bekt lined up, arms folded as they prepared for the spectacle of Krapt disposing of the churl. Their youngest brother had at least given the fool the courtesy of potentially dying with a bat'leth in his hands, as it was he would be killed or maimed without it. If they were certain of one thing it was that Krapt would ensure that his man would never drew a weapon again and would, likely, never speak again either. They all three grinned when Krapt sidestepped the first lunge, knowing what would come next, their father's honor would be avenged in a matter of seconds.

The loudmouth was almost too shocked to react when the steely grip locked onto his wrist, before he could fully process it a sharp pain drown out all other concerns as a hand smashed into his epicondyle separating the bones then yanking the now limp and dislocated forearm around to plant the blade in the warriors side. Krapt took a half step back kicking in the warriors left patella, collapsing the knee then grabbed the back of the ruffians head, fingers locking into the greasy unkempt hair before ramming him face first into the hard edge of the table. A sickening crack caused dozens of passers by to turn and look as the orbital and upper maxillary and zygomatic processes were crushed inward and into the brain pan. The warrior went limp, prompting Krapt to release the corpse, gravity slowly and agonizingly pulling the body free of where the table's edge was wedged into the ruin of his face.

Khurd looked over to Dhe'bekt concern in his eyes despite the vindicated expression, Krapt strode back over to his brothers, leaving the other six mercenaries to stare in stunned silence as the corpse of their ringleader voided bowels and bladder compounding the indignity of his final moments. The emotion on the face of Lo'wahl's youngest son was visible now, his jaw tight, nostrils flaring with each breath and a sickly hue taking to the skin as he seemed at once pale, jaundiced, and flushed. His eyes were showing his level of disquiet, seeming outraged simultaneously at his victim and himself; the victim for making the insult, for forcing him to defend his father's honor, for forcing him to kill, and at himself for actually doing the killing when he could have just humiliated.

When Krapt reached Khurd he was almost able to look him directly in the eyes, "May I return to the ship now?" His voice sounded muted, as if he was trying to hold either rage or shame at bay.

Khurd nodded solemnly, "Very well."

* * *

><p>Uhlan D'vor had not expected when he woke for his shift twelve hours earlier that he would be lying in corridor seven leading to plant operations bleeding to death. Everything he had heard about the humans was based on conjecture and supposition. None of the forces that encountered humans on the surface of Vulcan returned, of the ships in the invasion force that were able to break orbit and flee, only twenty seven of the original sixty eight managed to escape to the safety of the interior part of the empire. Over the last year they had lost nineteen ships attempting further incursions into the space occupied by the humans, but he always assumed they would remain a story used to scare children into eating their vegetables and going to bed. Behave yourself or the humans will come! Not so much a horror story for deep introspection before bedtime as a fire to light under the posterior of idle political-appointee officers and complacent enlisted personnel; you think that's going to pass muster when the human comes?<p>

When their flotilla came under attack he didn't know what to think. Nothing like this had ever happened before, sure there had been raids by the Klingons on and off over the years down on their boarder, a few raiders stabbing across the perimeter looking for plunder and slaves, rapine and kidnapping, that was usually the extent of the mischief and the prisoners were usually returned within a year or two as one of their plutocratic families decided it was best to not give the Romulan Star Empire cause to invade the fractious and disjointed Klingon territory. The sight of a pair of their Bird of Prey frigates was usually enough to the Klingon raiders fleeing, so when tactical alert sounded he wasn't sure what to think.

A single contact was moving to intercept at full impulse, shields engaged and weapons charged. Who in their right mind would charge five Birds of Prey in formation? Didn't they realize that their disrupter banks and plasma torpedoes would rip them to pieces? They were committing suicide, if they were that foolish D'vor felt no sympathy for them, it was the nature of the universe; the smart and strong thrive, the foolish die. Massive contact, about three times their size, electro-magnetic blooms from their forward bays, heavy signal jamming, active electronic warfare counter measures, they were being scanned by the approaching vessel. Who was that aggressive? It was plausible that is was an Andorian ship, seeking revenge for the cruisers they lost during the initial maneuvers for the Vulcan invasion. But as near as D'vor knew, the Andorians didn't have ships of this size.

The magnetic resonance scan managed to match a hull composition reading with that of the human warships, so it was the humans. Very well, if they intended to have a fight they would grant their wish, the captains of the five Romulan ships began making for the magnetic pole of Melovar 318. It was known that the humans had discovered some way to actively scan for cloaked ships, however the technique was still relatively crude and required an active scan to pinpoint the cloaked craft; this would allow plenty of times for the five ship flotilla to strike first. It was a relatively standard tactic, displace to an area that will provide the opportunity to cloak then flank an enemy contact, target key locations on the enemy craft, decloak then cripple it.

This was simply not to be in this case, the human ship had opened fire more than 200 kilometers out, crippling three of the ships, destroying a fourth and even as the ship he was on made it to the pole and cloaked they were still stalked by the massive warship. The dread, the palpable dread, it seemed to fill every centimeter of the ship, leaking out of everything like stench on a corpse. Breath caught in the lungs, slowly exhaled for fear, a desperate and improbable fear that the would _hear_ it when you let it out. They didn't broadcast a single sound, no demand for surrender, no taunting or confirmation that the Romulans on the ship would die a horrible death, just silence, the stuttering thump of their ship-to-ship low frequency communications the only sound as they relayed orders back to the rest of their task group.

In a strange way D'vor had to respect their efficiency, their obvious martial ethos, their devotion to the craft. They were phenomenally good at it, no doubt about it, the grudging admiration quickly disappeared when they began firing their energy weapons at their ship, as if the cloaking device was not engaged at all. The ship fired a single guided projectile, exploding near the aft of the ship, a feedback alarm began to wail as the nacelles degaussed and the warp engine scrammed to avoid dumping drive plasma into the stricken propulsion units. Systems began to fail throughout the ship; weapon, impulse drives, shields, and finally the cloak itself. That was when _they_ appeared.

He had been on his way to the central core under command authority to begin the kill-drive functions that would blank every computer, console, and piece of sensitive equipment on the ship, overwriting all data with null input, zeros in each sector of storage, four passes to ensure that everything except for an errant bit or two would be gone forever. When the seven bodies materialized in front of him and the three crewmen tasked to help with the operation he brought up his disruptor, before the enemy had even finished materializing the human had locked eyes on him and by the time D'vor couldn't finish acquiring his target he felt three hard impacts against his body and the loud series of pops and the slap, slap, slap sound accompanying the sensation. The feeling of heat and breathlessness overtook him as if he had just been struck hard, and a sudden unbelievable weakness of body; his arm wouldn't raise, his legs didn't want to carry him, he took a step forward before collapsing to the deck. He wasn't certain how he could feel so hot and so cold at the same time, his eyes fixed on the three inert plastic cylinders lying on the deck in front of him, they were small, not even as long as his finger with a smooth graduation from larger to smaller diameter at the open end.

The urge to close his eyes, fall asleep, cease to resist, just give in...the sensation overwhelmed him about the same moment the pain began, he clenched his teeth as the searing agony of ripped organs and flesh reached his brain and before he could cry out he was falling away from the world and into an enfolding blackness that could only be one thing; death. Submit, submit, just let it all be over and done with. It wasn't so horrible after all, sort of like falling asleep in a warm bath, if he let go the pain would end. Beyond the thump of his own heart, slowing, he could only hear the cavernous echo of the humans speaking, their language alien and rough in his ears like giants talking in a cave, somehow metallic and abstract and growing quieter and more muffled.

Hospital Corpsman Third Class Tovald Nansen sat crouched over the body of the stricken Romulan stuffing pressure gauze into entry wounds while squeezing saline through a large-bore IV into the unconscious Vulcanoid. Sergeant Craig Jefferson was standing a few feet away, glancing back and forth down the corridor, occasionally looking over the corpsman's shoulder at his handiwork. Nansen couldn't help but feel some pity for the Romulan, but also a sense of quiet indignity; the idiot should have never raised a weapon at a MARSOC veteran, it was the quickest way to get yourself killed. If it hadn't been for the fact that Jefferson could understand a modicum of Romulan and heard the female who was currently bound with pull ties against the corridor wall yelling "alive, alive" Torvald likely wouldn't be trying to save this man's life right now. Nansen looked up for just a second when he heard the gruff voice of First Lieutenant Pritchard ordering his squad to report.

"Enemy combatant attempted to engage with small arms and was reduced, sir." Jefferson replied evenly.

Pritchard was a hard man for being only twenty five years old. He was an academy kid, top rate officer pedigree but that's where he stopped being what one would expect. Rumor was the SID tried to poach him after graduation as had MCS Strategic Operations Command. He scored off the charts on academy applied intelligence and leadership tests, as a second lieutenant he had devoured more special training programs and schools than most of the current officers in the MARSOC detachment had completed in their entire career. The youth in his face was tempered by a kind of cruelty of expression and hardness in the eyes that forced every marine in the battalion to respect him.

"Will he live, Nansen?" The Lieutenant asked.

"Difficult to say, Lieutenant, he is in bad shape," He checked his medical scanner again, comparing the results to the baseline standard that had been compiled from scans on Vulcan, "If we can get him over to Tirpitz for treatment I think he has a chance of making it."

"You need to work on your aim sar'gen'," Pritchard commented sardonically, implying that if his shot placement had been better the status of the enemy combatant wouldn't be in issue. He reached up to his ULF transmitter, "Sohei, this is Assassin two, requesting casevac, one hostile critically injured, necessity of medical attention urgent, over."

"Wait one, Assassin..." A series of cracks and something shouted in pidgin-Romulan, likely by another marine, came over the ULF receiver. "Repeat last, Assassin."

"Requesting casevac for one critically injured hostile, urgent care required, over." Pritchard paraphrased, doing a quick mental count of how many had been detained, captured, or killed by his platoon since they boarding action began.

Nansen watched the medical scanner, his blood pressure was still dropping, his respiration becoming more labored, in a few more minutes the requests would all be academic if something wasn't done right now. Reaching into his trauma kit he pulled out another pressure bandage, bodily lifting the Romulan to pull it around his side and wrapped it tight around the chest, trying to staunch any further exsanguination on the part of the stricken Romulan. His insides were, no doubt, a mess, a sad hallmark of the heavy weight 8.6mm projectiles used in the Special Forces M-7 Mod 2 carbine. It would certainly take major surgery to save him, but if he could at least keep him alive until they got him into the hands of a surgeon he had done his job and upheld his oath.

"Request granted, Assassin, patching you through to Raider transportation controller now."

Nansen let a sigh of relief leave him, at the very least he wouldn't have to be the one to watch him die, he'd kept him alive up to this point and if he had his way the son-of-a-bitch would pull through. It was not because he didn't want another Romulan to die, it was because he firmly believed in his heart that they...humanity, MCS, the marines and MARSOC were better than the Romulans, and saving this one's life, expending the time, effort, and resources to do something this utterly thankless, would just help prove it.

* * *

><p>Commander Al-Sistani entered the small engineering lab to find Captain Tucker bent over the small control core that had been gutted from the Romulan Cloaking Device. Trip's plan had worked perfectly, the five kiloton Starfish warhead had done virtually no damage to the enemy ship but with their shields down and navigational systems disrupted by the existing magnetic field and the fire they had taken from the phaser batteries, the electro magnetic pulse weapon had managed to knock out most of their systems. From there it was simply a matter of putting as many sections in the ship in as many places as possible as quickly as possible to stop and control the flow of Romulan personnel before they could effectively sabotage their own ship.<p>

When Major Musashibo returned to the ship reporting that the engineering and electronic warfare team had been able to successfully extract the main computer core and cloaking device control system from the Romulan ship Tucker had been forced to visibly fight the urge to leave the CIC to go inspect the devices. Tucker vacated the CIC at 2100 Zulu, seventeen hours after he had arrived at 0400. The ship had effectively been at General Quarters for the past two weeks with the crew sleeping and eating in shifts, no department was ever below 125% staff level since they had sent _Enterprise_ hobbling back to Earth, but the crew wasn't nearly as much on edge as the Captain was. Nassir didn't want to say anything, didn't want to bring it up, didn't want to make Tucker's job any harder but he noticed that the captain wasn't getting enough sleep, wasn't eating well, and the effects of the stress were beginning to tell on his body.

Six hours ago Al-Sistani had left the CIC in the command of Lieutenant Commander Snellis and decided to catch a few hours sleep. Part of his purview as executive officer was to monitor the health of his CO so when the internal monitoring systems indicated that Captain Tucker had not been back to his quarters since leaving the CIC twelve hours earlier he already knew where to look. He could almost smell the exhaustion on his commander, a combination of soured sweat and the kind of breath prolonged periods with an empty stomach produced. Nassir's usually playful and irreverent demeanor quickly melted away as he watched Tucker tapping away at a PADD, his eyes glued to scanner readouts. COFDOC wiring hung from a number of wall fixtures where it had been run to jacks crudely affixed to the cloaking device components. The room smelled of ozone and solvents, the modern day formaldehyde in a thoroughly 22nd century Dr. Frankenstein' lab. It's alive! It's alive! Everything about Tucker oozed mad scientist, from the hunched posture to the frenzied input of data, eyes and head darting spastic and bird-like from item to item, utterly absorbed by the data, the fucking data!

The NWU jacket and short cut hair were the only things that seemed particularly out of place, if they had stuck Tucker in a white lab coat, heavy rubber gloves and opted for pomade slicked or wildly bedraggled hair he would have looked certifiably brilliant, fiendishly insane, and read to commit unthinkable blasphemies in the name of science.

"Trip."

Tucker looked up, his face pale with exhaustion, lips colorless and eyes rheumy, but with a grin and a twinkle of victory in the bloodshot blue iris-ed orbs. "I got it, I got this thing all figured out."

"That's great...now go to bed." He didn't use his normal teasing tone, it wasn't a suggestion, it was an order.

"But we've got it, I cracked the thing, you know that that means?" Tucker was enthused, it was clear from his voice, but it was tamped down by an overwhelming level of physical and psychological exhaustion.

"What? You can make a working cloak for our ships?" Nassir seemed taken by the idea, some part of him wrestling with the potential ethical ramifications and trying to keep that part of him from dueling too drastically with the part of him who saw the possible tactical and strategic advantage.

"Nah, no where close to that, 'sides, why would we want one of the damn things?" Tucker countered, "I figured out how the thing does its job, that means we can scan for it."

Nassir felt a spike of real concern, how could he not realize what he just said sounded crazy? The protocols to detect cloaked ships were over a year old now, "Skipper, we've been able to do that for months."

Tucker grinned, the twinkle in his eye intensifying, "Not like this we ain't! This is a passive scan protocol, we can use it with the radio telescopes or phase array...we don't have'ta broadcast our location non-stop, but we can see 'em comin' without them ever knowin' we're lookin' for 'em!"

The Iraqi officer's eyes went large, if what Tucker was saying was true... "Are you certain?"

"Bout as certain as I can be without givin' it a dry-run." Tucker nodded, stifling a yawn.

"Do you copy down your procedural findings?"

"Yep."

"Alright, I'll get an EWO working on it, but right now, you really need to get some sleep, sir."

Trip chuckled, knowing instinctively how much and how badly he was going to lose this fight, "I ain't gonna be able to get you off my case, am I?"

"You may be expert ranked at Micmap, sir...but I've got one hell of a rear naked choke and I'm stronger mad than you are stubborn." Nassir blustered, knowing that he was probably dead wrong and Tucker could probably out fight him half-asleep with two limbs immobilized, but he was willing to gamble on his bluff being pretty convincing.

"Alright, alright, you win...if you could please post sentries and lock down the room I'll grab some rack time."

* * *

><p><strong>[Author's Note] <strong>

**[!WARNING: LONG AS HELL!]**

**Another quick aside, we're slightly past the half-way point for this story and I just wanted to clear up a few things real quick. First off I've noted that there has been some negative critique of this story, not a huge surprise there, I usually expect as much. I will, however, say that if you don't like the story nobody is forcing you to read it...it's actually pretty simple, you hit the back button on your browser or click the super convenient "Star Trek: Enterprise" link at the top left corner of the chapter, it's just above the story tag pane. As an outgrowth of that particular issue I'd like to address the point of "proofing". Okay, I'll yield at least a partial measure on this one, I don't proof read very well, it's easy to overlook your own mistakes and easy to catch those made by others, which leads to the question "why don't you use a beta?" Quite simply, because I understand how precious time is and I'm not about to waste someone else's with my recreation. If you are a professional editor and being a beta on the side helps keep your skills honed, good for you, that's good thinking on your part. If you are not a professional editor and beta for the recognition, I'd suggest a slightly less thankless pastime as the cost-benefit analysis ends up with you on the short end of the stick. If you beta for any other reason...hey, masochism...whatever paddles your canoe.**

**Okay, that being said...I just want to clear up a few more things. I think there is some confusion over what this story is supposed to be. It's not necessarily meant to reflect how the characters are in the canon universe, I'm actually trying pretty hard to depart from that paradigm with the exception of certain personality traits. Star Trek is nice, but it tends to fall to a lot of the same tired sci-fi tropes we've been seeing for decades now. Humans tend to be self-effacing in life, frankly I don't want to see it in my fiction. The model has always been everyone that isn't human is either smarter, stronger, prettier, wiser, more advanced, or magical, and often a combination of several of those elements. Yet, somehow, in defiance of EVERY bit of reason humans win the day through the "Power of Mediocrity®". Yeah, you know what...bullshit...do you know mediocre people? The only thing they tend to be able to do better than anyone else is NOT draw attention to themselves. I was tired of a universe where Trip was more accident prone than all three stooges, Laurel and Hardy, and a Watermelon at a Gallagher show, border-line retarded in his own right, and had about all the social actualization of a slime mold on the cover of Philatelist Quarterly. Similarly I was a bit chagrined with Archer as the Douche Without a Cause, make no mistake, I still consider him a douche, just one with some justification for being so.**

**Now that I've finished alienating everyone, I feel much better. Have a nice day/afternoon/ evening/night/interrupted-circadian-rhythm or whatever is applicable for your time-zone and the time you are reading this.**


	32. Chapter 32

Bullshit...it had to be; this was a joke, the most deadpanned, one in a million, end-all-be-all, caught on camera practical joke of the century...no, more like the millennia. A cosmic epoch would pass; suns would die, sentient races would die out, new ones would rise to take their place, and the universe would continue in its immutable, impossible to understand cycle before someone would lay out one this good again, this joke, this...insult. Archer blinked a few times, eyes locked on the inscrutable expression he was certain would crack any moment now, a smirk tugging at the corner of the mouth, creases forming in the brow and corners of the eyes, until that upward jerk split lips into a toothy grin, then as jaw pried free from the maxillary side laughter would issue forth. You guys really had me going, you really got me there, phew I thought you were serious. But in this case the face was not moving.

"Could you run that by me again..." Archer choked out.

The face still didn't budge, this was definitely a run on practical joke champion here, as the response remained as equally flat and nonplussed as before.

"Enterprise is done Jon...that's all she wrote. We can patch her up and send you out doing diplomatic circuit and victory laps for a few years but her decommission date is set." Forrest didn't blink as he perused the data on the PADD before him.

"We need every ship we can get on the Romulan front." Archer countered, his voice choked with the emotional anguish of Forrest's pronouncement and the frustration of obsolescence.

"Every functional ship, Jon...Enterprise is a wreck, I wouldn't want to put it in another fire fight."

"Then we repair her..." Archer spoke the words in a deliberate manner, the words dripping with the kind of matter-of-fact 'wake up stupid' that had alienated more than a few people in MCS.

Forrest sighed, exasperated, it was like talking with his kids, "Look, there are people questioning your viability as an attack boat skipper."

Archer recoiled, his expression horrified at the implication.

"As a task group commander and diplomat you're the best we've got, but you do not have the right mind set for the kind of combat posture we need against the Romulans, Jon."

He didn't want to do it, didn't want to allow bitterness to invoke the exception he saw after everything that had happened, but he felt the words leaving his mouth before he could staunch them, "But putting an engineer in charge of a gun boat seemed like a good idea?"

"It does when he designed it and will be doing all the trouble shooting."

"And sending him and an untested ship into Romulan space to cause havoc with a light task group will help him iron out the bugs? Do I need to clarify or explain precisely how stupid that sounds?"

Forrest speared him with a glare, Archer had likely assumed this was a gaffe from Gardner or more madness out of Black, when in point of fact Forrest had been behind the strategy for Task Group: Linebacker. "Sending a smart, aggressive commanding officer in a ship he knows inside-out to bring the fight to the enemy? I must have missed what part of that was stupid."

"Aggressive? You're talking about Trip Tucker for Chrissake!"

"Do I need to remind you again about his battle history?" Forrest barked.

Archer reared himself upright, staring back defiantly, "I made a huge mistake over a year ago thinking that I knew him, that I understood what he was about and sort of assumed that all the dirt and nastiness that got thrown off him just rolled right off, but we've killed most of the good that was in that man. If we keep pushing him into battles where his biology and sense of duty will take over in place of his sense of values, we're going to be responsible for killing him."

Forrest shook his head solemnly, there were moments that came, seemingly, out of nowhere, where Jonathan Archer was probably the most mature human being you could ever meet. Those moments were usually carelessly sandwiched between bouts of him seeming like a petulant child and were often used as justification for the fact. Now was just such a time, but damn if he wasn't right about that. "Jon, it may suck, but it's the Trip Tuckers that you end up having to sacrifice because they're willing to let themselves be sacrificed. Do I like it? Hell no! I don't know of a sonuvabitch alive or dead that _enjoyed_ sending men like Tucker to their grave or soul amputation but it's the one thing that is immutably constant in universe."

Archer looked away, shaking his head, fighting back a few frustrated, self-sorry tears, "I'm just as guilty as anyone...I did this to him too."

"Alright, get it out, go see that Vulcan of his..."

"T'Pol." Archer supplied.

"Yeah, her...go make it right, apologize, recite the kir shara, do a secret hand-shake, become their kid's godparent, whatever it is to get this off your chest and your head back in the game because we're going to have you really busy really soon here."

"Don't bullshit me, the diplomatic circuit is not that big a deal, we've been sending anyone with the time in to do this kind of crap for the better part of sixty years now." Archer grumbled, folding his arms across his chest to match a furrowing brow.

Forrest turned back to face Archer, his face strangely earnest as he slowly shook his head, "Not like this, Jon...things are moving at a pace this are of space hasn't experienced in centuries. We need our symbols out front where the immediate galactic community can see them, you may not be a model MCS officer or the prototypical Naval skipper, but you get respect and results and that's going to be important like you wouldn't even begin to imagine."

* * *

><p>"General quarters, general quarters, all hands report to battle stations, this is not a drill. Repeat, general quarters, general quarters, all hands report to battle stations, this is not a drill." Commander Al-Sistani intoned over the ship-wide intercom.<p>

"Mister Cooper, alert the task group we are zero seven minutes from line of departure." Trip intoned calmly over the buzz of activity and voices in the CIC, crossing a two meters that separated him from his executive officer.

"Aye, sir. All Raiders, set condition one, line of departure, zero seven mikes, how copy? Over."

Al-Sistani turned part way as his commander approached, still keeping his eyes fixed on the Radio Telescope overlay on the LIDAR display tank. Target distances and deflection angles from the line of line of departure had already been calculated, it would only take seconds for the targeting solutions to be confirmed. The heavy batteries would be more than adequate for the reduction of the strategic targets; fifty five kilogram saboted KEPs moving at around 22,075 kilometers per second against a stationary target would all but disintegrate the structures. The demilitarization charges where set to atmospheric pressure fuses, they would blow themselves apart the second they hit the upper limit of the tropopause to ensure a stray round didn't turn into a kinetic-kill city buster device.

It was so elegantly simple, nothing would stop the barrage, all the Romulans would be able to do is to throw sacrificial ships in the paths of the oncoming rounds, having to either match their trajectory in order to avoid taking the full brunt of a projectile accelerating at just slightly over one tenth of light speed. Firing the weapons at full impulse was not a readily accepted component of the MCS TO&E, it was almost barbaric in the shear destructive power it imparted to the already deadly railguns. Barbaric...the unprovoked attacks were barbaric, this was just reciprocity, beyond that, it was mercy; sparing the Romulans the full weight of an MCS invasion, dropping brigade combat teams and MEUs of Marines hungry for combat on their homeworlds to crush and pacify was barbaric, this was just teaching them a lesson in the most humane fashion possible.

"You know, we're gonna find out in just a minute if this was a really bad idea or not." Tucker said in a low tone, the comment clearly meant only for the ears of his XO.

Al-Sistani let a bit of a wan smile cross his lips, "I'd have said so at the time if I had thought this was a dumb idea."

"Are we absolutely sure those pressure fuses will manage to redistribute the energy fast enough? I'd kinda hate to be the one responsible for making Khan Singh lookin' like a small time killer..."

"Deflection should put the rounds in one of the oceanic bodies, sir, possibility of collateral causalities would only place civilian deaths in the dozens range by possible tidal flooding." Nassir declared evenly.

"Still don't like the thought..."

"And that's why I'm not concerned about you becoming the next Noonien Singh." Al-Sistani grunted, then chuckled, "You know, when I was a boy there was this girl that lived a few blocks over, her father was a baker and they made the best Taboon...so I used to go to their shop. She was beautiful," Nassir commented wistfully, "So when I was fourteen I finally worked up the courage to give her a kiss."

"This ain't one of those we're about to die and I just had to tell you, stories...is it?" Trip tried to sound like he was making a wry observation but only managed to sound dourly concerned, "Because if that's the case don't you dare start jinxin' it by thinkin' that way."

"Bear with me skipper." Nassir grinned, "It was the most forward thing I had ever done in my life to that point, so I ran home real quick and my father took one look at me and knew right then I'd done something. Funny thing about Druze is we're not suppose to marry outside al-Muwahhidun so giving a Ja'fari girl a kiss was about as bad as I had ever been. So the old man looks at me, frowns and says, 'Nassir, I hope she was worth it'."

"Oh man, I bet he tanned your hide..." Tucker mused, pondering some of his childhood and teenage escapades and the resulting disciplining he had received as an after-effect.

"No, he said 'I hope she was worth it because her three older brothers are going to kick your ass'." The lips peeled back to reveal the ridiculously white toothed smile that contrasted so sharply with Al-Sistani's darkened bronze complexion.

Tucker stifled a laugh, "I assume there's a reason you're sharin' this now..."

"Well, I got my ass kicked for sure... I guess the point is, we're basically being Vulcan's three older brothers in this case...so it had better have been worth is." The commander's mood changed from light and nostalgic to deadly serious almost without warning, the funny and pleasant Iraqi naval officer suddenly replaced into pure augmentee warrior with a target. Everything that had made him such an effective attack boat skipper suddenly becoming evident in the sudden dichotomy of personality. It was just that simple, the commander had rendered it to its basest form; the Romulans had been missing with Earth's slightly warmer, slightly odd sister and now Earth was going to the Romulans' house to kick their ass.

Trip felt his five series reaction begin, his focus suddenly becoming razor sharp as his executive officer began experiencing a low-percentage five modified MAOA reaction occur. Trip could as much feel the reaction beginning to take place among other crew members as sure as if the air pressure in the room had changed; a sort of palpable and contained aggression ready to be focused with deadly efficacy. Killing instinct, the breathing seeds of war tightening muscles, sharpening eyesight, every sound clearer and more precise; breathing smoke, churning blood, hate and discontent focused down into the tips of fingers, the balls of feet, the knuckles of fists. Let it all rain down on the enemy, pour it on, angry fire, righteous smoke, volatile fuck-off, retribution, indignation, payback...that arch-bitch of arch-bitches. The kind of omnipresent almost sapid aggression that stands the hair up on your neck and arms and anywhere else, the almost palpable combination of fear and rage and just a little bit of pleasure that somehow manages to work its way contradictorily into the mix; a good kind of mad that was somewhere between a towering berserk and almost religious zeal, the strange ecstasy of the fives that the others just couldn't understand, that could never be adequately explained to those who had not experienced it themselves.

Al-Sistani had felt his own reaction begin to kick in but was almost floored by the aggression he felt seething off Tucker, most of the five series augmentees he had encountered in his career sat at around the 50% genetic integrity marker, Tucker's whopping 90 plus percent was a reaction sort of like being punched by a brick house, it was like a hair trigger on a cannon and the second he was set off it would only be a while before every other five on the ship went a little crazy in that special way they did. It was sort of creeping thrill that you were aware of in some very low and basic part of the brain as every cognitive function focused on making war with the same enthusiasm and attention to detail as others made love; intense violence, a capacity for inflicting it that bordered on the disturbing and sadistic. It was something that only other fives could wrap their head around because they experienced it too.

Movies and the popular media was always trite, almost insulting about it, when the five series hero, or more often anti-hero, was about to go up against the villain in the climactic last battle he'd say something like "I'm going to make hate to you." It wasn't hate, nothing could be further from the truth, it tended to be utterly dispassionate honestly, it could be set off by anger, but the reaction itself was always horrifically dispassionate as all upper mental functions began to focus on one thing and one thing only; reduce the threat, by whatever means practicable, reduce the threat.

Tucker walked over to the Communications station, holding out his hand, "Give me all boats, mister Cooper."

"Aye aye, sir." The petty officer handed Captain Tucker the hand set, keying the ULF frequency to the task group action traffic channel.

"Action, action, all ships this is Raider actual, line of departure, zero four mikes, begin departure maneuver bravo three, navigational deflectors to minimum. Synchronize clocks now for operation maneuvers, actual out."

Looking over at the LIDAR display tank Trip watched as the pair of frigates and four destroyers pulled into a tight column behind the _Tirpitz_ relying on the larger more powerful navigational deflector of the battleship to clear any navigational obstructions as they warped into the system proper. They would be exiting subspace deep inside the system where the number of possible obstructions was heightened and with the necessity that they re-enter normal space less than two hundred thousand kilometers from their target, the timing would have to be very precise to avoid potential collisions. It was easy to right it off just as such, but it wouldn't be as simple as a bump a ship at sublight attempting to coexist in the same space as ship still moving at faster than light speeds through subspace would destroy one another in a spectacularly violent fashion. A chain reaction on the molecular level as both ships literally were rendered chunks of reaction mass for a nuclear explosion.

There were no records that MCS were aware of where such an event had occurred but it was always assumed that somewhere, sometime it had happened and perhaps it explained some of those stories of ships that were lost and never found again. A navigation officer falls asleep at the helm and one freighter or transport smacks into another. You didn't even have time to consider the impending doom, it was over faster than the brain could even process what had occurred, before it could even register something _had_ occurred. The energy released in such an event would make finding wreckage impossible as each ship would literally explode on the molecular level, hull, engine, superstructure, plates, chairs, people...dogs, cats, everything _including_ and not limited to the kitchen sink became reaction mass for the explosive process. Unless you knew the individual signature of the molecules involved it would literally be impossible to find any evidence that they ever existed as the molecular and sub-atomic remains scattered across the endlessly open expanse of space.

"Steady as she goes, mister Smiley." Nassir uttered calmly to the navigator, watching carefully as each of the ships took up their station, seven scalar kilometers behind one another, the _Jakarta_ pulling the slack position would be the first craft to exit subspace, the _Toronto_, _Baton Rouge_, _Frank Merrill_,_ Ulan Baator_, and_ Desmond Smith_ would exit one after the other in succession with _Tripitz _exiting last and positioning itself ahead of the rest of the task group. Al-Sistani knew each of the commanders of the other six warships and was confident that they could pull it off with every ounce of precision that Tucker as the task group commander would expect.

"Fire control, mister Tyner, mister Gardetto, remove safeties from capacitor banks on all forward batteries, all rounds, demil HE command and HE atmospheric." Tucker ordered crisply, then turned to missile control, "Deployment of type fifty one ADCAPs is authorized against static combatants and assets, mister Chamberlain."

Over at the electronic warfare station senior chief petty officer Gunderson began to execute the x-ray and radio telescope scan procedures to get an idea of what was sitting in the immediate system since the last long range phased-array radio telescopic scans. As soon as they entered system he would enable the entanglement scan protocols to detect any cloaked Romulan craft in the area. "Skipper, I am still showing only nine surface contacts with active power-plants, six stationary and un-powered, seventeen matching surface contact configuration with no indication of active power plants or incomplete structures."

Trip worked his jaw in an agitated fashion, letting excess energy bleed into a piece of chewing gum he was masticating with almost aggressive vigor. "Man, their IFF sucks or they're waitin' for us with a surprise, either way we're gonna get to put'er through her paces today."

"Two minutes to line of departure," petty officer Smiley commented dryly, rolling his shoulders inside the thermo-ballistic body armor and tightening his grip on the control yoke for the ship.

Tucker looked over to his executive officer, pulling off his soft cover and placing his combat helmet in place in the process. The executive officer nodded, steely resolve showing in his eyes as he secured the chin strap on his own helmet, looking around the CIC once again to make sure all the personnel present had adequately secured their protective posture equipment.

"Alright, gentlemen...let's earn our pay." Trip bellowed.

* * *

><p>Soft, clear yellow heat bathed bared skin as the tingle of breeze played across the surface, momentarily unbearably cool just to make the warmth of the sun beams that much warmer. Lazy cottonous clouds traversed the horizon of impossible blue that extended into infinity only to be broken by the sullen dark gray of the distant edges of ocean. One such bright and clear days it was almost as if one could see a thousand kilometers, even through she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the curvature of the planet acted as a natural barrier to the limits of eyesight. Off to her right the sehlat made a guffawing sound, prompting a giggle from her child as he teased the creature by pouring sand from a tiny plastic scoop on its forepaws. She lowered the PADD in her hand, where she sat in the deck chair and fixed her eyes firmly on the child, "Solan, do not mistreat him."<p>

The sehlat looked up then immediately turned its head back to his young charge and began to diligently lick at the sandy blonde locks on his head as if the half-human, half-Vulcan child was his own cub to be groomed and nurtured. T'Pol watched for a moment, considering the hygienic ramifications; how many potentially hazardous microbes existed on the tongue of an average sehlat, what possible Earth pathogens the animal had acquired or come into contact with, and whether or not she had conferred immunities to her child during the nursing phase. She considered for a moment attempting to stop the behavior but before a word of protest could be issued or resolution to rise could be reached, she watched as the little semi-Vulcan reached up, wrapping his arms around the neck of his saber-toothed nanny and hugged the creature close, burying his face in the larger being's fur.

For a moment T'Pol watched the display, feeling a strange sense of contentment that still seemed somewhat alien to her. The satisfaction she derived from her mate was rivaled and supplanted by the experience and, now, the memory of the moments of closeness she had spent with her child, holding him while he slept or during the nursing process. In the moments of touch, the contemplatively quiet moments of that singularly distinct mother and child intimacy she had been able to brush his katra even as he unknowingly and clumsily brushed against hers. She knew, beyond anything else, that her child was remarkable, not just by dint of his parentage and not as some illogical parental reaction, she knew he was remarkable because she had experienced the proto-consciousness he had exhibited since before his birth.

This was clearly all Trip's fault, his own capacity for emotions helping her discover her own, teaching as much through example how to process those emotions as he processed them himself. All that passion and fire that he kept hidden in the walled off tinder box of his soul had helped her realize the fire and passion in herself. The veneer of logic was intact, there was no risk of it shattering or wearing away that couldn't be dealt with via meditation.

It was all Trip's fault that she had come to love, genuinely love, the Florida coast and the ocean that was both strange and intimidating to her. It was his fault that she loved to feel the sun and sea winds on naked flesh and was driven to wear the bathing suits that shocked her with their immodesty.

It was Trip's fault that every time she put on the red bikini top and bottoms and wrapped the sarong around her legs she remembered the way his fingers had touched her that late spring day on the Gulf Coast beach that had lead to all this...

It was Trip's fault that the tiny life had been put in her body and she had come to know and experience a sort of unconditional love that was so diametrically opposite from everything she had been raised to believe that she ached to be able to express it. And the act itself...again the memory of his hands and lips; the strange dichotomy of maternal adoration for her child and the eroticism of the act that had created it.

Every nerve in her body came alive as she remembered it all, the strange series of events, the seemingly simple and unremarkable events that had changed the courses of their lives so drastically.

Sex.

Passion.

Love.

A biological act, a reaction set construct, and an emotion...three things that when combined changed everything in every species she knew of. The rationality or the irrational; it worked, it functioned, it was the standard and the model by which all other events could be measured. It defied the pale logics of Vulcan and the tepid emotions of Earth and when mixed, tempered each by the other, it was so uniquely explosive.

If she could bottle it, patent it, rip it apart to discover its mechanics and chemistry she was partially certain that it would changed both of their peoples permanently. But that would mean demystifying it all, and even if some Vulcan compulsion and demand of the old canons of logic would have forced her to try to analyze what it was to love through the lens of cold practicality, Surak had preempted that as father of their logic. The bond...it was sacred, perhaps the single most sacred thing for their people because it was the one thing that had _always_ defined them.

She looked back down to the PADD, trying to force the unnecessary and frivolous moments of introspection to the way-side. There were other concerns at present, namely this report on parabolic red and blue shift patterns. She wasn't entirely sure why she had been approached to edit the thesis; who had pulled the strings. If it had been from Vulcan she would have assumed it was either her mother or an overly contrite Minister T'Pau or perhaps even Soval who had done so to keep her mind occupied and further reaffirm her connection to her people. However, this was a paper from the Electronic Warfare department at MCS's San Francisco campus which had led her to wonder if this was not, perhaps, pandering on the part of the Admiralty board to keep her busy and, specifically, her husband placated and, perhaps, more pliant to the idea of continuing a career the organization as a whole would benefit from.

It was a well conceived if not particularly well written study, the language was plodding and more complicated than was necessary to convey the results of the research. Based on her perusing of MCS official documentation she realized that it was wholly unsuitable for an official publication for used by the Electronic Warfare department of the MCS Naval branch.

She would have to wrestle the forty plus pages of meandering stream of consciousness into a more practical and workable framework that could be understood and utilized by department heads that only may have the minimum of education necessary to attain a billet as a Communications and Electronic Warfare officer. It was a challenge, and she found the idea of a challenge strangely agreeable after a little over a year of sedentary life.

"Oh...my...God..." Hernandez muttered under he breath. She and Archer had just cleared the side of the house and were looking out towards the beach to where they had heard the sound of a child's babble just barely clear over the sound of languid surf about a hundred meters off. T'Pol's hair had been instantly recognizable, it was about three inches longer now, and a much lighter shade now than when she had first been posted to _Enterprise_, but there was no mistaking the boyish cut and elegant neck. What was surprising was the expanse of skin, back and shoulders all but bare save for the carmine straps of her bikini top. The skin itself was a deep copper shade, seeming to indicate that she was regularly availing herself of the sun. Erika felt a sudden spike of jealousy; the tone, clarity, and apparent suppleness were without a doubt perfect. The twinges of envy immediately melted into subtle irritation, she was relatively sure Jon was getting an eyeful, but when she turned her head to see where he was looking his eyes were already locked on the child and the comparatively huge saber-toothed cat-creature next to him.

"There he is." Archer muttered almost breathlessly, seeming to be in mild awe of what was, as far as Hernandez was concerned, was just a child.

T'Pol's head turned suddenly, making eye contact and her expression, in as much as was possible for a Vulcan, showed immediate surprise. Her Vulcan sense of modesty made no concession for being exposed in the privacy of their home environment, the next most immediately close house was about six hundred meters away, this part of the beach was rarely frequented by anyone, sitting around in swimwear in front of her child and their pet saber-toothed tiger didn't set pre-condition on modesty.

"We probably should have called ahead." Hernandez groused as she felt sympathetic twinges of embarrassment for the lovely Vulcan before them.

"Don't mention what she's wearing, don't bring it up, just act like you would when she was in uniform." Archer said under his breath, some little trace of Surak bleeding into his voice.

"Where will you be?"

"I want to meet Solan."

"I'm sure that'll be an interesting conversation." Hernandez smirked.

T'Pol was hastily pulling on a white button down blouse, doubtlessly seeking to find some degree of modesty in the article of clothing. The poor thing, is suddenly dawned on Erika that the concept of flaunting was about as divorced from T'Pol's mind as going on a pilgrimage to Mount Seleya was from hers. Hernandez was proud of her figure, she took good care of herself, but compared to this Vulcan where everything just seemed to defy any and every rule she felt more than just a bit inadequate so while seeing the institutionalized and instinctive insecurity come into play she felt a combination of superiority and pity. There weren't very many moments where it was the case, and to be fair she had probably seen more of them than was her fair share, but when taken out of her element T'Pol really was like a little girl frightened and unsure of what to make of a world that tossed her a curveball which seemed to happening with increasing frequency since she took to cavorting with Trip Tucker.

"Hi there, stranger." Hernandez called out as T'Pol found her composure and the dignity of more clothing.

"I was not aware that you would be visiting." She tried to keep her voice even, but there was a small hitch in her speech that Erika couldn't quite place.

"We weren't scheduled to be...Trip pulled us out of the fire about three weeks ago." Archer commented, his own voice quavering with some inscrutable emotion.

"It is unfortunate I was not able to welcome you properly."

"It's our fault, we decided we wanted to surprise you, which in retrospect was kind of dumb on our part." Hernandez cut smirking eyes over at Archer who responded with a slight frown.

"It is agreeable to see you both." T'Pol replied evenly, clamping her hands behind her back suddenly seeming more Vulcan again.

"It's my fault, I just had to come meet your little boy." Jon volunteered, accepting his fair share of the blame for the rather unconventional intrusion.

"I am certain he will find your presence agreeable."

Hernandez watched a moment as Jon walked over to squat down next to the child and his furry guardian before taking a few steps closer to T'Pol. Vulcan emotional suppression actually made them strangely easy to read when their emotions got the better of them. In T'Pol's case she could see the nervousness and disquieted by the sudden and unexpected intrusion into their normally quiet and cloistered domain. In retrospect Erika considered the fact that surprises were, more often than not, unpleasant and this was likely doubly true for a people that saw just about everything through varying degrees of logic or illogic. Still, it was nice to see their former cultural attaché and the child that had sort of hung over the entire ship as a kind of haze of curiosity and regret ever since their departure. The initial enthusiasm when Hoshi, Malcolm, and Travis had broken the news had been palpable, as had the indignation when the media sprung on the couple after their son's birth. Looking at the child now she could definitely see the influence of both parents in his appearance and a strange twinge of heartache chewed at her; she would never have this, never bring a life into the world to call her own. Maybe it was never supposed to be thus for her and...Jon? Whoever at this point, she wasn't sure anymore about what to expect, what the mixed signals even meant.

"Trip..." She began slowly, the feeling of emotional anguish causing a strange intensification of that of her wounds, "saved us all. We were all going to die, nothing else we could have done."

She turned to make eye contact with T'Pol, "Thank you."

"It is hardly appropriate to thank me, I didn't do anything."

Erika smiled a strange melancholy smile, "If things hadn't transpired like they did, we'd probably all be dead right now."

T'Pol cocked a brow upwards, "I believe you are underestimating my capacity to have adequately prevented whatever occurrence lead to the potentially fatal event."

Hernandez looked at her incredulously, then, the subtlest bit of movement in T'Pol's face caught her attention, it was skirting the edge of utter imperceptibility by human standards, but for a Vulcan it might as well have been three meter tall lettering, she was smiling.

"T'Pol, did you just tell a joke?"

"Perhaps."

* * *

><p>Normally, this would have been the part where they each would have gone their separate ways to find someone, anyone with which to slake the building sexual tension. Four years...it had been four years since they had shared a bed or a couch or even a desktop for that matter. It was their ritual, a shameful thing that they never mentioned and forced them to not be able to look in each others eyes for days and sometimes weeks on end afterwards. The better the sex, the more release it provided, the more shame it seemed to provide. They would go through the motions of affability, talking like it was nothing, but the inability to face in the other what they had done would remain until they tacitly forgave the other and themselves at the same time.<p>

But tonight she had managed to corner him, the normal cycle of returning to their respective rooms before "hitting a club" had been turned on its ear as she had cleverly broken their age old ritual of mutual self-effacement that had, perhaps, been the only think that still allowed them to serve on the same ship. When she had made the reservations she only specified a single room for double occupancy with a single bed, queen size. This was a nice hotel, right on Cocoa Beach with luxury accommodations and the correct proximity to everything the area had for purposes of entertainment and diversion.

"I'd better go clear this up with the front desk." He moved to exit from the room when she crossed to stand in front of the door.

"It's not a mistake, Jon."

"What do you mean?"

She sighed, "I told them the reservation was only for a single room."

"Then where am I staying?" He stared at her with a confused expression.

"I can't do this anymore."

"Do what...?" Archer folded his arms across his chest.

Seriously? He couldn't be this dense. "This, between us..."

He sighed, part exasperation, part defeat, a twist of self-loathing, and maybe just a little indignity as a garnish, "We both knew what we signed on for."

"I want what they have...I've wanted that since..." She turned partially away, "Fuck! I've wanted it since you were still that cocky jack ass lieutenant junior grade."

"Erika..."

"No, goddamit I'm going to finish saying this. I prayed..._prayed_ that one of those night you were going to end up knocking me up and then there would be no choice left." She pondered her statement a moment, "There still would have been a choice, I'd have gotten the abortion if I had too, but maybe then we could have finally been adults about it and made the decision."

Archer squinted, "What are you talking about, we both had our careers."

"Jesus Christ...is that seriously all there is to you?" She let the disappointment laden confusion paint her face, maybe it would be better if he left the room right now.

"We agreed." He growled knitting his brows, "We both agreed that we wouldn't let it come in the way of our careers."

"That was only after I told you I had to know what it was going to be between us." She protested, throwing up her arms in exasperation.

"Erika..."

No, not just no but fuck no, this was going to get settled right here, right now, tonight, one way or another, "Don't fucking 'Erika' me, I want an answer!"

"Alright, fine...no, that's not all there is to me...but you're my executive officer, beyond the fact that its illegal do you know what fraternization means for us? It means I'm done, it means you're done, it means half the officers under our command are done. It means every decision in ever situation we've ever made gets second guessed and put under the microscope to make sure it was a legitimate order."

"And that's the end of the world?"

"It's our goddam duty! It's bigger than us!" He shouted back, all the frustration and shame and recrimination of years and years of doing this finally all coming out at once.

Hernandez just folded her arms across her chest, she could expose the fallacy in that argument with ease, it almost wouldn't have been a challenge. He did this often, hang his logic and ideology against the wall, or whatever cop-out du jure he had come up with, so people could take pot shots at it. Most of the time nobody did, she wasn't sure if it was out of sympathy for what tended to be weak arguments or because they just didn't want to piss him off; for all of his failings he did tend to be a good and effective leader and if you had to measure a person by good they had done versus harm, Jonathan Archer had a heavy lead on most people.

The problem here was that he didn't even believe that bullshit argument, she could read it on every inch of him, it was something he told himself to allow himself to sleep at night when all the regret and second-guessing came piling in trying to rob you of the solace that would let you close your eyes and put your head down on the pillow. She had tried the same argument herself, the difference was she already knew better and she could never find comfort in it.

Fuck it, time to just call it, she was tired of holding on, she wanted to be together again, more than anything, but you could only try to breath life into a body so long. "Jonathan, if you don't sleep with me tonight you'd better walk out that door right now because we're done."

"Erika-"

"Stop staying that! It's this simple, we're either together or we're not, I can't keep going on like this, what are we?"

He kind of smirked, she hadn't expected that, "You could have just said so in the first place."

"Wha-"

She couldn't get the word out, his lips had already moved to cover hers. Good God, it took him long enough, she was beginning to wonder if she was going to have to get Hoshi to translate it all into an SOP format to get through to him. The sex was probably going to be horrible but that didn't matter, because it was _who_ she would be having it with that mattered more than anything.

* * *

><p>Words could not begin to encompass the horror that one must feel at the sudden and dreadful inexorability, the confirmation of doom that one must experience of being on the receiving end of an MCS Naval weapon barrage. As energy weaponry goes, the phased energy weaponry used by earth was slightly below the standard of the immediate galactic neighborhood in terms of energy through-put and destructive capacity. The way they got around that particular failing was to just push more energy through for a longer period of time, it wasn't horribly efficient but it got the job done. The mark fifty one ADCAP missile was a throwback to a bygone era, but it worked, well, as a matter of fact. The rail guns were the truly most terrifying piece of equipment though, Conically tipped chunks of hyper dense osmium and iridium with ribbons of ferrous-magnetite to allow it to be propelled magnetically from completely still to anywhere from sixty three to seventy seven kilometers per second in just less than one fiftieth of a second. If the craft employing the weapon was also moving forward at the time, add that to the relative velocity and the weapon could become nothing short of a clean nuclear bomb in pure destructive capacity. The docking facilities had come apart almost as if a house of cards had been struck by a sudden gust of wind, at impact the energy had transferred so quickly that the atmosphere itself had become super-heated, oxygen igniting as tell-tale gouts of flame shot from entry and exit holes where energy had not transferred from projectile to impact site more completely. Areas where the rounds struck heavy structural reinforcement, the sections didn't have enough time to yield to the penetrative force and were ripped into contorted shapes as thirteen terajoules of energy transferred more completely from the projectile into the target.<p>

It hadn't ended at that, the standard order of Linebacker to develop any situation the served to undermine Romulan strategic capability meant that they didn't abandon the area once the dockyards had been destroyed. The first nine Romulan combatant craft had fallen quickly, what human energy weapon technology lacked in efficiency _Tirpitz_ made up for in terms of number and size. Over the next seventy two hours they remained in the AO attacking any Romulan combatant craft that entered the system. By the sixty eighth hour of the operation it was growing clear that crew fatigue level was reaching the breaking point so a plan had been hastily reached to exfiltrate to a nearby micro-nebula where they would be immune from the prying eyes of Romulan long range scans to give the crew a forty eight hour stand down. Al-Sistani had been proud of the crews' performance, their professionalism had remained crisply intact even as the sporadic fighting wore on into the seventieth hour. Tucker, however, was seeming like a man possessed, having planned the next three legs of the expedition during the stand-down period. The more he saw the more he respected and admired Tucker for his dedication, not to his career or himself or even his craft as much as to the organization as a whole and people under him. The only point of concern was how to effectively act as a counter to Tucker's often self-destructive tendency to push himself harder than anyone else in the crew, his willingness to set his own bar above everyone else's.

It might take the rest of the tour, but Nassir was dedicated to figuring out how to tamp down that self-destructive over-enthusiasm before it destroyed the captain because there was still a part of him that was relatively sure that Tucker wouldn't be leaving _Tirpitz_ any time soon regardless of what his spoken intentions may be.

* * *

><p><strong>[AUTHOR'S NOTE]<strong>

**Small update to the image section for Infinite Diversities, the link is available in my profile. As time wears on I will be uploading additional conceptulization images to help put some of this rather weird spin on the Star Trek universe into context.**


	33. Chapter 33

Trip drummed his fingers on the desk, trying his best to show how profoundly disinterested he was in continuing this line of conversation. One of the design concessions he had made for _Tirpitz_ was an advanced medical suite with urgent and trauma care facilities, a surgical theatre, and a staff capable of dealing with mass casualties. Part of the appropriate staff was a mental health specialist, a fact he had all but overlooked at the time of reviewing the roster but a fact he was keenly, much to his annoyance, aware of now.

He reflected for a moment that while he had, up to this point, spent much less time in his personal office than Archer had in the weeks during and immediately following the shakedown of _Enterprise_ back in 49 he had, however, managed to keep his more personalized. It was a fact that the Commanding Officer's personal office for the _Iowa_ class battleships were smaller and less comfortably appointed than those on the CGX and CG class boats, but Trip had made sure to include a few toys and options absent from those on earlier ships. A personal privy and closet were two of the features, it would be nice not having to leave the bridge or CIC to get to the head during long shifts, and then there was his favorite addition; the sound system. The music coming over the skillfully hidden and sequestered speakers in the cramped room sounded of piano and organ with drums, electric guitar and a bass accompanying the wailing gospel roots style vocals. Classic delta blues, a sort of comfort food for his ears that he was trying to focus on to avoid being colossally pissed off with Lieutenant Commander Mark Goodson who was holding a PADD and looking at him even now, like some atypically calm third-base coach at a little league game for the developmentally challenged.

"Alright, let me ask you somethin'..."

"This would probably work better if you didn't take such a confrontational approach, Captain." Lieutenant Commander Goodson opined, his voice pedantic.

Did he just seriously say that? Okay, fuck this guy, seriously. "Is this a little cup of espresso lieutenant?"

"What?"

"Am I holdin' in my hand a tiny little cup of espresso?"

"No, sir."

"Is this maybe a caramel macchiato then? Or how about a cappuccino with a little heart made out of cream on the surface?" Trip didn't give him time to issue any form of rejoinder.

"No, sir, I don't think so."

"That's right, its just a plain old mug of re re re reheated coffee. You know why it isn't some fancy coffee drink, lieutenant? Because this ain't some book club full of existential angst and pre-mid-life fashionable self-loathing. Because I ain't gettin' paid to feel." He rumbled, making no attempt to paint over his irritation at having a shrink session, "So you can go ahead and write up the sympathy chit or whatever it is you need to do, but I'm a bit too busy to sit around talkin' about shoes and my vagina, and I sure ain't got time to feel."

"Sir, last week six hundred and fifty three Romulans, as near as we can figure, were killed during our attack on their orbital docks. You don't feel any guilt over it?" Goodson cringed at his own wording, it was not meant to be an indictment but it came out as one.

"No, not really...I don't. Am I sorry it came to that? Hell yeah, wish to God I didn't have to do 'em that way, but what's the alternative?"

"Not sure I follow, sir." Excellent, he'd managed to get him to respond, with that in place he could at the very least keep him talking, which was exactly what he was here to do in the first place.

"Did you see that Igor Yegorov film?"

"No sir, I didn't."

"Okay, well, not much point in tryin' to put it in context but it might be somethin' for you to look into. Might help you understand a bit better what we're up against with these people, if doin' things like this stop them from movin' aggressively in this sector-"

Goodson interrupted, "I know, sir, we're doing the area a favor."

Trip shook his head, "Naw, that's not it a'tall, son," despite the fact Tucker was only a year older than Goodson, "we're doin' them a favor. If it came to that, any military action we would take against them in way of a full campaign would cost 'em tens of thousands of lives on the conservative end of the tally. You know how many they lost on Vulcan? Sixty five thousand dead...now wrap your head around that number."

Goodson was silent a moment, considering, it wasn't exactly the answer he expected.

"You're from Moncton, right? New Brunswick?"

The Lieutenant Commander was a bit shocked, he'd never had a CO that had remembered that correctly. "Yes, sir."

"Population is about...what...fifty eight thousand, right?" Tucker narrowed his eyes visibly trying to recall the information.

"Yes, sir, right at about that number."

"Now imagine every last man woman and child in Moncton was killed...I know the dynamic is a bit different bein' war an' all, but just to ponder the numbers and weight of it. The Romulans never got to run back and report 'we lost this many guys to this many enemy and here's why', its all still some big mystery to 'em...so they don't 'sactly count as bein' snake-bit yet. There's still a chance that if we came chargin' over their boarder with full fleet task groups and dozens of Marine Expeditionary Units they'd still think the could win the fight in the end, and how do you think that'd end? Bad... Best thing we can do to deter them from doin' somethin' that's gonna eventually require us orbitally bombardin' them to get their population numbers in check enough for them to focus more on recovery than aggression, is to put the fear'a God in 'em now while we've still only got on Iowa to slap 'em around with."

"So you consider this a mission of mercy, sir?" Goodson could understand the logic in the argument, further more, he could hear the subtle anguish in Tucker's voice, a good indicator that this did bother him, profoundly, but not nearly as much as the moral horror of what would be required to totally pacify the Romulan people if adequate deterrent steps were not taken.

"No, I don't, this is punitive." Tucker's voice and facial expressions became cold and unyielding, reciprocity, righteous rage, that kind of steely passion that chilled to the bone and made Goodson want to crawl into a hole for shelter, "We're punishing them for their aggression, we're showing them what we will _not_ tolerate in terms of their behavior and relationship with the rest of the galaxy at large," His face softened, "it just so happens that doin' so might save 'em a few million lives in the long run."

He had heard rumors, stories, scuttlebutt passed along in the form of profanity and wild exaggeration laced epics that jumped from ship to ship, crewman to crewman, about the more colorful personalities on the ship and Tucker in particular. Commander Nassir Al-Sistani had the benefit of leading a crew that had, to a large extent, been drawn from the best of brightest he served with on the _Detroit_, a ship that, admittedly, had more than its fair share of best and brightest. To them Sistani was the older-brother cum super-hero they had served with and been nurtured by; but Tucker was the being in whom the crew was in awe. The respect he commanded from Major Musashibo and, by proxy, his MARSOC battalion created a subtle pall over the ship as the scary and course Warrior-Brain Surgeons of the Marine Special Operations Command went out of their way to show their respect and deference to their former-engineer skipper. Some of them had clearly seen Yegorov's _Conqueror's Obligation_ and witnessed what Tucker had lead the Marines through, Shi'kahr was being called the worst strategic situation a marine command had found itself thrust into since the Eugenics war, some argued in the entire history of the component national military forces that had formed MCS. Others may have heard of Tucker's record during the 47 War, others still may have heard of his exploits in the expanse when MCS took the fight to the Xindi in 53.

It was the fact that Commander Al-Sistani had voiced concern over the Captain's lack of sleep and utter neglect of her personal health that had caused Goodson to up the timetable of his conversation with Tucker as part of his quarterly review of the mental state of all the active personnel on _Tirpitz_. What he was discovering now, however, was that Tucker was a puzzle that was far more complex than his easy demeanor, tendency towards self-effacing jokes, and personal eccentricities seemed to suggest.

"Do you miss your wife and son?" Goodson promptly changed the subject.

"You know," Tucker leaned back, a strangely subtle little smile changing his entire demeanor, "we'd been so busy lately, I hardly had much time'ta think about 'em."

"What is it like being married to a Vulcan, does their lack of passion create a strain?"

"See, that's where most everyone has it wrong." Tucker sat up a bit straighter, lifting an admonishing finger, "Vulcans are_ not_ dispassionate, hell, near as I can figure they're prob'ly more passionate than we are, they just keep it way deep down."

"Are their cultural conflicts?"

"No more so than if I'd married a yankee or some girl from the midwest."

Goodson frowned at the Captain, "Seriously, sir."

"Last I checked marriage counselor wasn't part of your credentials, and quite frankly its not really any of your business, lieutenant." Tucker kept his voice in good humor but his eyes were all but burning a glass line in the sand and daring the Lieutenant Commander to cross it.

"Your mental health is part of my business, captain." Goodson declared defiantly, more than just a hint of an edge in his voice. He quickly followed up on the statement, further qualifying before some retort could leave the captain's mouth, "When _you_ designed this thing as the definitive warship you neglected one very important thing."

"And what was that?" Tucker seemed amused.

"Morale...welfare...recreation. You took small quarters and made them smaller, you took recreation capacity from fifty percent available crew and dropped it down to twelve percent, you completely removed the opportunity for the crew to install a shine still, and you kept the crew ninety percent male so they can't even screw out their frustration or boredom."

"Well...some of them..."

"You get my point, sir." Goodson countered curtly.

"Alright, you've got somethin' of a point there...but what's that have t'do with me?"

Goodson frowned reprovingly, "The part where you're responsible for all of them."

"Alright, alright, touché lieutenant..."

"Is that what is causing your sleeping troubles?" The psychiatrist asked evenly, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands just over his lower thoracic area.

"I've never been much of a sleeper, ever since I was a kid."

"So it's not unusual for you to go multiple days at a time without sleep? Do you suffer from recurring nightmares?"

Tucker furrowed his brow and bit his lower lip contemplatively, "Not when I was a kid... I guess I just always wanted to keep goin', there was always somethin' I could be doin' and sleep just kind of interfered with that."

"But you suffer from nightmares now..?" Goodson prompted.

"Sometimes..."

"Are they recurring?" Goodson thought he might be onto something now.

"You've gotta have my record there, what does it say?"

"Doctor Phlox was notably terse in keeping records when it came to the mental health of those on Enterprise, sir."

"What about you, lieutenant?" Trip narrowed his eyes, looking at the doctor reprovingly.

"Everything I put down here is confidential except whereas is applies directly to your mental competency, sir."

"So, basically, I could tell you that I thought I was empress of the moon and you'd...what, exactly?" Tucker began rubbing his chin, waiting for the reply to what he had clearly meant as a challenge.

"I'd determine if you actually believed that statement and if so I'd put a note in your psych eval that you were suffering from delusions and elaborate mental construct fantasies."

"But nothin' about me bein' Empress of the moon?"

"Only at dinner parties, sir." Goodson fired back with barely a moment's pause.

Tucker burst into peels of hearty laughter, slamming a hand on his desk, "Christ almighty! You're alright, Goodson."

"Does that mean I can expect regular appointments, captain?"

Trip frowned, "Alright now, don't go pushin' it."

"All the same, sir, if it can help you with your performance..."

Tucker's head recoiled as if struck, a smirk on his face, "Talkin' to an engineer about improvin' performance, you sure know how to hit below the belt, doc."

"Permission to speak out of my capacity as medical personnel, sir?"

Trip shrugged, "I thought you were in charge."

"I'm not trying to shrink anyone's head, sir. I don't even want to know your deep dark secrets, half the shit I get told I almost wish I didn't hear." Mark declared with biting frankness.

"Geez...professional integrity?"

"Let me finish, sir. Hearing about what torments other people, what keeps them awake at night, what's ruining their marriage, what had their husband or wife already cheating on them, what keeps them from being able to go into a crowded restaurant or buy a gallon of milk or turn the lights off a night...that's mostly all absolutely horrible shit that no human being should ever have to experience much less be ordered in to. I don't derive any satisfaction out of hearing it or having people reveal it to me...its like being the best homicide detective in existence; doing your job means you have to be exposed to some of the darkest parts of humanity."

"Well you've certainly made me glad I didn't decide on therapist as a job, Goodson." Tucker replied, his face showing more than a little alarm and disquiet at the thought.

"That's where you've got it all wrong, sir. If I can take even a bit of it off their hands; the guilt, regret, anger, fear, self hatred, whatever it is, if I can ease their minds just a fraction...then its worth it."

Trip arched his brows, "True believer, huh?"

The lieutenant commander shrugged, "'Fraid so."

"Well, hot damn...don't know if that impresses the hell out of me of scares me shitless." Tucker smirked.

"A little bit of both is probably your best bet, sir."

* * *

><p>Valek stared across the mess hall hard, trying to place the faces he was seeing. Wide eyed, confused, new uniforms. Everything about them said "newcomer" to him, from the way the issued jumpsuits hung on their body to the strange uncertainty about this place and where they fit into the schema of prisoner of war. He nudged his former commanding officer with his elbow, nodding his head in the direction of the new prisoners directing Surat's attention.<p>

"Hold outs?"

The ex-Centurion shook his head, "I don't think so, sir, they look too fresh, too well fed. My guess is that they were just captured somewhere else."

Surat shoved his fork into his food, he wasn't sure what it was made off, what it was even called, but compared to Vulcan and Andorian fare, at least the human food that was served twice a week in camp had meat and some variety to it. Strangely, it was the humans who often seemed to be the least brutal, or at least, the most understanding of the guards at Joint Base Wehytan. Their guards had one rule; obey the rules and show respect and they would be treated with respect. Valek did respect them, grudgingly, the humans made fine soldiers and where courageous and intrepid fighters. He also had to respect their capacity for brutality as was evidenced in their weaponry and training techniques. Sure enough, the guards did provide him with respect, he still felt like a soldier not a criminal, and they treated him as such, allowed him his dignity and allowed the Romulans to maintain their discipline through a faux chain of command.

So it was that Valek was still Surat's right-hand, and what was left of their cohort still looked to the sub-commander for orders and to their centurions for leadership. This discipline lead to good behavior, good behavior lead to the respect of the guards, and the respect of the guards led to privilege.

Surat nodded to his subordinate, "You know what to do."

"Yes, sir." Valek rose, nodding over to a table of his men who promptly rose to follow the centurion.

Surat had a distinction that he was only now becoming aware of among all the Romulans who participated in the invasion of Vulcan; he alone had managed to lead his unit through the conflict without losing more than fifty percent of his total contingent. The sub-commander had personally lead six attacks on the main gate of Camp Kelly and survived, a fact they had only become aware of after the prisoners of war began to communicate with one another inside the walls of the joint base prison area. Surat had been able to use this fact to further cement the loyalty of his men who had a sudden appreciation for what they had often perceived to be an inept, if even handed, commander. This, in turn, had served to establish a mystique around their cadre that kept potential predation at bay.

Most of Valek's men had taken to cutting their hair short as to prevent allowing an easy hand-hold for possible assailants. They had taken this step after speaking to one of the human guards inquiring why they kept their hair so short. Of course, the primary reason that human soldiers kept their hair so brutally short was for hygiene purposes, but that seemed of secondary importance when it came to martial ethos. The short hair, the bearing, the subtle swagger made Surat's men stand out and in their uniformity to one another and distinction from others of their kind, it made them more intimidating. By the time he'd reached where the newcomers had congregated Valek had twelve of his men in tow, while the new prisoners surveyed the area looking for a place to sequester themselves.

"Jolan tru, comrades." Valek intoned to the collection of fresh Romulan faces. "Have you just arrived?"

The looked back at him with concern on their faces, a little fear, it was perhaps understandable. Two years ago Valek would have looked at himself and his men and thought they were the worst Romulan society had to offer, they looked hardened in ways no one of their race ever should. It was relatively certain that none of these had seen or even heard anything about what happened on Vulcan.

"I am Centurion Valek, my commander wishes to ensure your safety isn't compromised."

One of the new comers, a male with a young looking face and features that bespoke at least some privilege spoke up. "Is our safety really that much at issue?"

Two of Valeks' men exchanged amused looks, the Centurion nodded, "There is no deficit of threats here."

"From the guards?" Another one of the new comers asked, his rounded face still a mask of concern and confusion.

"No, from within." Uhlan D'Varr piped in.

"Surely not from our own people..."

Valek gave a solemn nod, "Imprisonment brings out the worst even those who swore an oath to the empire."

The haughty one spoke again, "How can we be certain you are any different?"

Valek smirked in amusement, "You can't. All I can encourage you to do now is take advantage of at least partial safety until you've reached your own decision."

As if on command, Centurion Torell's men all stood moving to the ends of the tables to make room for the new comers. There was an almost surly martial discipline to the move, the thirty eight almost shaved-headed Romulans making way and casting cold stares at the rest of the cafeteria, the threat evident.

"Is he your commander?" The princeling pointed over at Surat where he sat, surrounded by a cadre of Torell's and Valek's most trusted.

"Sub-commander Surat." Valek replied

"I know of his family, what reason is there to cast our lot in with him? What makes him an honorable Romulan?"

Uhlan D'Varr grinned, "Because the sub-commander wouldn't approve of our behavior most of the time."

"So you are villains then?" The noble-born challenged.

"No." Valek retorted, his voice even but with a hint of threat in it, "we wouldn't dishonor him that way. But we also won't let his authority be challenged."

* * *

><p>"So what exactly are we lookin' at in terms of reaction mass, ordnance, and food?" Trip leaned forward to pick up the PADD with the data on it.<p>

"Well just about everyone is down a pants size right now, so in terms of provisions we're looking at about six more months on current stores before we're in bingo range. Add another two months on that as the emergency stores and if we were careful, one more month if we snuck into the HDR store." The chief of the boat, Master Chief Petty Officer Wallace "Wally" Glen reported in his almost farmer sensibility, "In terms of reaction mass, we could fly to Earth and back five more times before we have to top off the tanks."

Tucker nodded, "That's good. So where exactly is the problem?"

"Ordnance..."

Tucker fought back the profanity that wanted to exit his mouth, he knew exactly what it was now.

That son of a bitch mining complex, that damn rare-earth mineral processing facility, the piece of shit advanced electronics lab, the whole fucking infrastructure for their cloaking and electronic warfare capacity.

The whole beautiful treasure trove built around a single seven hundred square kilometer area on what seemed to be a relative back-water of a world deep, deep, deep in their territory. The quantum entanglement process the Romulans used for IFF meant that every one of their cloaking devices and electronic warfare systems were linked by identifying a series of electrons vibrating at a set and constant frequency. The electrons were entangled to one another allowing them to immediately identify one another's presence as far as their conventional sensor suite could reach. When Trip figured out that the cloaking device contained the particular piece of identifying firm-ware they were not only able to passively detect any cloaked Romulan ship within radio telescopic range, but also seek out long range concentrations.

It had been precisely because of this development that they were able to detect the manufacturing complex. The mines were extracting huge amounts of rare-earth metals that were necessary in producing the magnetic apparatus that actually created the cloaking field. Thousands of kilometers worth of tunnels, elevators that extended up to five kilometers down, the deepest terminus of the complex extending a mind boggling eight kilometers below the surface, and the ore holding and processing facilities; if it hadn't been such a strategic concern Trip would have honestly admired it. He actually agonized for seven hours about whether they should try to seize the facility and beam up as much ore as they could hold in the six ship task group. Major Musashibo and Commander Al-Sistani had enthusiastically endorsed the idea. The logistics though...if they could have held the system for a week, expected reinforcements, they could have pulled a few thousand tons of the ore out, but that would have been theft, and even in time of war there were certain things you just didn't do.

As it was a very precise fire mission was planned, a seventy five round MRSI that would collapse the mine structure, flatten the processing facility and abolish the manufacturing plant. The other thing that they had been forced to agonize over was what to do about the fifteen thousand civilians in the immediate effected area. The risk produced by aerosolized heavy metals and rare-earths didn't seemed to be imminently hazardous based on the analysis of the lower and upper atmospheric wind patterns and the likelihood that most the potential contaminants would be tamped down in the initial collapses. The debate over time-table was spirited to say the least; Al-Sistani believed eight hours warning for the Romulans to evacuate was needed, Major Musashibo and Commander Garza of the _Desmond Smith_ seemed to believe two hours was sufficient. It was the issue of how long was too long, how much time would be needed for the Romulans planet side to call in a sufficiently sized task group to prevent the attack. Trip, as task group commander, had final say on time table and after long consideration decided to provide five hours of early warning before beginning the strike procedure.

The plan for attack would effectively result in seventy five kinetic kill projectiles being launched at pre-determined points in the immediate and surrounding areas of the mine and two facilities, the pure destructive force of rounds traveling that fast causing massive explosive damage and sympathetic seismic collapses that would render the entire complex utterly compromised for at the very least, a few months. Realistically, it would take years if not decades for the mine to be restored and the loss of so much of the stealth system manufacturing capacity would set back their production of cloak-ready ships for the better part of a decade at least.

This was asymmetric warfare; slowly are surely gutting the Romulan war machine while leaving its people, largely, unharmed. The morale effect, the questions it forced at all levels of the population, the fear it engendered in its own right would be as effective a weapon as the strategic damage itself.

Of course, the downside to the beautiful plan, the flawless execution, the moral and strategic victory, the masterful used of maneuver and tactics was that _Tirpitz_ had managed to expend all but thirty rounds of the 155mm M1709 heavy rail gun munitions. They still had 245 rounds of the lighter 90mm M706 munitions, but they were not nearly as suitable as massively anti-materiel ordnance.

"So that's it then..." Trip folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the bulkhead. "Time to head back home."

Eight weeks...where had they gone? Estimates of damage rendered in man hours of work lost or in need of replacement hovered at around the eight point six million mark. Three orbital construction facilities, one naval marshalling yard, two listening stations, one major production complex, and at least six hundred seventy thousand tons of Romulan shipping destroyed without so much as a man lost in Task Group: Linebacker. When the Romulans began to assemble in force for a counterattack, they just outran them. When smaller groups came in proximity, they simply engaged and destroyed them. The _Toronto_ had been sortied to take Romulan prisoners back across the border a little more than a week ago. All that had been left to do for the rest of Linebacker was to skulk around looking for more targets of opportunity.

"It's really been two months, hasn't it sir?" Glen mused.

"Yeah, seems like only yesterday we were pullin' Enterprise out of the fire, doesn't it Cob?"

"Aye, sir, where did the time go?"

Trip chuckled, a slightly bitter sound, the kind of laugh at the grim realization that your task is done and you can fully take it into stock, "Time flies when you're havin' fun."

Chief Glen shrugged, a gesture that amount to little more than cocking his head to the right slightly with arched brows and a wan draw at his mouth. "Permission to speak freely, sir."

"Say yer piece, Cob, lord knows you've prob'ly had to put up with enough wet behind the ears jackass COs over the years."

"There's scuttlebutt that you're thinking about EASing once this tour is over." The chief measured his words carefully.

"It's just the shakedown chief, well, on paper anyway."

"Well, sir, I think I can speak for most of the crew when I say I can't think of a CO we'd prefer for the boat."

Tucker pushed off from the wall, his body language indicating his relative degree of discomfort with the conversation. "I'm just here to put'er through her paces'n make sure everything is workin' up to muster, chief. Once we put back in they're probably gonna put A.G. Robinson in the big chair anyway."

"Well, for what it's worth sir, we'd pretty much all like to see you as the skipper."

Trip forced a smile, "Thanks, Cob, but I think this is my last war."

"Judging by your leadership, I'd say you still have two or three left in you." The chief couldn't help but grin.

"Oh lord, don't you go jinxin' me now!"

"My permission to speak freely still in effect, sir?" Glen asked, squinting one eye slightly as he did so.

"Are you about to make me regret this?" Tucker's expression was permissive but worried, he sort of knew he wasn't going to like what he was going to hear but wasn't about to tell a sailor as old and experienced as the chief of the boat he couldn't speak his mind.

"Sir, you're lying to yourself if you insist that this isn't the life for you. Don't get me wrong, Tirpitz is one hell of a ship, you did the best damn job in terms of design I've ever seen coming out of the docks. But..." He folded his arms across his chest and sighed, "you're a fighter too sir...a damn good one. I know it ain't my place to say, but it would be a shame for you to squander that ability."

Trip didn't like what he was hearing and did very little to hide the fact, it wasn't that the chief as making him mad as much as he was saying all the things that he had tried again and again to kill about himself. He didn't want to be a war fighter or an attack boat skipper, he didn't want to be the hand holding the blade or the weapon to be brought to bear. All he wanted to do was to continue to design and work out the kinks in the systems; in short be the same engineer he _thought_ he had signed on to be in the first place. He wanted, more than anything, to just return home to Florida where he could work as a civilian advisor on contractor as Canaveral or Eglin, providing the know-how and expertise to help MCS refine their equipment while still being able to be husband and father.

"Well, thanks for speakin' your mind, Cob." Trip uttered, his voice tight.

"Sorry if I overstepped, sir."

"No, its alright, you deserve to be able to speak your mind." He did his best to affirm the right of the senior NCO.

"Aye, sir. By your leave?"

Trip nodded, "You're dismissed, chief."

Home, home, what did that even really mean now, in the wake over everything? Every minute of every day since he left _Enterprise_ until _Tirpitz_ left its mooring three months ago had been laden with stress and worry and a million concerns. What would he do when they put back in from the shakedown and he was able to go home again? What would he do when his life would be able to revolve around T'Pol and Solan? It all sounded so peaceful and sedentary, a life without MCS worries, without having to be separated from them. What would become of them when there was no longer anything to keep them separated by either distance or regulations?

Every minute for the rest of his life...it suddenly all seemed very daunting, frightening, a strange new world he wasn't even sure he could wrap his head around, up to this point almost a full half of his life had been dedicated to Starfleet. How would life go on without that oppressive structure that reigned in the free spirit that had once been such a part of his identity? To hell with that, what was he going to do when he no longer had the easy choice of Naval Work Uniform or Naval Service Utility Uniform anymore? The fact that he would actually have to build a functional wardrobe and be conscious to style was suddenly and almost ridiculously about as daunting as anything he had ever considered.

He had thought about it before, almost in passing, probably the longest he had really given it any thought was during the last four month sortie on _Enterprise_ but once it had ended... At what point did you really stop, slow down, and start making a life for yourself and your family? At what point did a man like him take that step? He'd never had a plan in his adult life that didn't somehow involve MCS, and now he was presented with the very real position of no longer having that aspect of his life anymore. He was going to have a very long, very tedious, and very genuine conversation with T'Pol and admit what he had been denying to himself now for nearly two years; the fact that he would be lost as directionless. She would have to take up the burden and give him direction or, at the very least, keep him focused once that life of discipline had been ended. Up until now he had, often, felt like the rock in the relationship; T'Pol still struggled with her emotions more than she let on, he could feel it. His ability to process not only his own feelings but hers had made him the point of stability as she had increasingly begun to rely on him rather than meditation and suppression to deal with the emotional strain. But what would happen when he suddenly found himself in the nigh-depression level malaise of transitioning back to civilian life?

Don't think about it, don't consider it, disregard transitions thoughts, ignore transition feelings...focus on the task at hand, there were still three months left in the shakedown cruise unless additional orders were received and given the current strategic implication of supply levels, it was time to exfiltrate from Romulan space. Tucker stepped from the conference room into the CIC walking over to the communications station. Charlie shift was in full swing now, meaning it had been twenty eight hours since he'd slept last, he was seriously beginning to have problems keeping track of the time.

"Give me the task group, mister Hon."

"Aye aye, sir." The junior petty officer punched in the security codes and handed the receiver to Tucker's waiting hand.

"Action, action, all ships, this is Raider actual. Set heading for friendly territory, best possible course and speed. I repeat, set heading for friendly territory, best possible course and speed, we're goin' home."

A whoop of elation went up in CIC; not that the fight was over, not that they were escaping enemy space, but because the order meant that they'd done their job, they had succeeded. Preemptory back-pats and hand shakes began going around the bridge, the atmosphere forcing a smile out of Trip who had to admit, taken in context, it was a good feeling. The job left undone was inconsequential when compared to the job that had been done, the task they had succeeded at despite what were, on paper, insurmountable odds. In practice, Trip was relatively certain they had never been at substantial risk; their ability to detect the enemy at great distances, engage them well beyond standard stand-off range, and then very easily outrun them at high warp had meant that they had never found themselves in a situation they could not get themselves out of.

The bridge became suddenly quiet as all the crew turned to their commanding officer; junior enlisted, senior NCOs, officers, marines, as one they straightened up, heels together and backs straight, saluting their commander.

Trip fought back the urge to smile, to even appear embarrassed, bashful, it was one of the few times he was able to remember, with utter clarity, his position and role and what was appropriate of it. So instead of grinning, getting misty eyed, and blubbering like the emotive kid he knew he was, he just smirked slyly, almost sardonically, and with a combination of characteristic candor and uncharacteristic snark said, "You guys are gonna give me a big head."


	34. Chapter 34

Sub-consul Valaris ascended the steps to the Senate chamber, being at the beck and call of the Senators was bad enough in its own right, but the fact that he would become the inadvertant object on which the ire of the senate would be heaped upon him. The limbo of status, somewhere between military figurehead and government bureaucrat; both and neither at the same time, no real power to decide anything, it was in effect an over glorified secretarial position where he had all the responsibility, all the expectations, and none of the expectation of glory. And of course when they couldn't find an adequate proxy on whom to lay blame they usually shot you. Perhaps a bit of an overly dramatic characterization, but there were always rumors that it was the very thing that had happened to some people holding that position in the past. It was a staple in Romulan bureaucracy; "did you hear what happened to the last person who held this position?" Of course the reply was often "they retired," or "they got promoted," but there was always the story of the one clerk in the one department that no one had seen or heard from again after some particularly compromising revelation, usually about political misconduct on the part of a senator or consul.

Senator Terelisa was already waiting for him, a fine looking woman in her own right, and if it hadn't been for the fact she was so entirely above his station he would have considered perhaps attempting to court her. She was considered in some circles to be quite the beauty, there were clear elements of ancient ancestry in her features, the smoother brow and less pronunciation of the brow bones than in most Romulans. It was a good indicator that her bloodline had been very selectively bred for a very long time to avoid most of the more common features of their people.

"I expected you ten minutes ago."

Oh yes...and she was also as pleasant and endearing as a sack full of venomous snakes, the other reason that made courting a foregone conclusion. The positive perceptions of her on the basis of her appearance and status were often quickly dispelled the moment she began to speak.

"Perhaps if I had a legion of aides to compile my reports for me I would be able to spend more of my waking time focusing on punctuality." He sort of hoped that some day he would discover that all the vitriol was actually sexual tension, but as time went on he became more and more convinced that she was actually frigid.

"Aides are only necessary for positions of actual significance."

"The strategic outlook of the empire...certainly not of any significance."

She sneered as they continued up the steps, "You certainly have a high opinion of your office, that is a potentially dangerous trait, Valaris."

He took a bounding step in front of her, stopped and turned to face her, leaning forward and down to stare right in her eyes, "You wouldn't be the first senator whose career I outlived, nor are you likely to be the last."

She half smirked, trying to keep her expression inscrutable and just a little hostile, "Nice to see we have petty bureaucrats with some fire in their blood."

Valaris straightened, having made his point adequately, "You have no idea..."

"Praetor Markev will be in attendance today." Takal's voice softened appreciably.

He stopped dead in his tracks for a moment as he felt the sudden surging heat of spiking blood pressure and the sudden feeling of dizziness as it just as quickly dropped; his mouth dry, his knees weak, fingers suddenly numb. A death sentence. "I didn't have time to complete final preparations..."

"He is not who you have to worry about, it is the other senators that are jockeying for position." She grabbed his sleeve to make sure she had his undivided attention, "It is also not your throat the blade will be on, it will be mine, so I would find it a personal favor if you ensured it is not cut."

Valaris cocked an amused brow, "I can be reasonable."

The way she looked at him in response left him perhaps more worried than the initial concept of the Praetor calling for his head. He wasn't sure if it was pity, loathing, or confusion. The first two were good, or at least acceptable...he would know where he stood, the final was worrisome because in Romulan politics it was usually best to destroy that which you didn't understand.

"Good, I would hate to have to issue my order to liquidate everyone and everything that lead to my downfall before being removed from office."

So she had either missed his subtle innuendo entirely or she had picked up on it perfectly and her response was painfully decisive. He wasn't entirely sure which was a bigger turn-on. But there would be time for that later providing their world didn't come to a screeching halt in the next fifteen minutes when he began presenting the report. He wasn't sure he would have been able to believe it himself if it wasn't for the fact that the humans have made absolutely no attempt to hide the fact that it was only one battle cruiser that had done all of the damage.

"How should I address the Praetor?"

"You won't, he usually says little, if he asks you a question directly, answer honestly no matter what it is."

He cocked his left brow again at the reply.

"Really, I mean it, no matter what it is. If you hate his shoes and he asks you about them, tell him that you hate this shoes, he appreciates candor more than sycophancy."

He swallowed, honesty had gotten him in trouble enough times, but perhaps Praetors were a different breed, like the Romulans of old who could sense when a person was lying, could sense fear, anxiety, duplicity. He found his mouth dry again and began wondering if he should begin the Litany of the Raptor, calling on the ancient bird god for strength and guidance.

"Takal..."

Both turned to witness an older Romulan man approach, the robes of his station clearly indicating he was of high office, it only took a moment for Valaris to recognize it was proconsul Demek, second only to the Praetor in position, the ultimate bureaucrat that all sub-consuls and consuls one day aspired to be.

"Father."

Valaris' head bounced back to the senator so quickly he almost felt something pop. Her father was the proconsul? He had been making overtures to the proconsuls daughter? He was almost certain that was a capital offense in its own right. He was just unsure what esoteric and ritualistic form of torturous death would be warranted by such an act. As long as if didn't involve being fed to vermin alive or anything to do with being slowly feasted upon by said vermin he was relatively sure he could handle it; insects were a deal breaker.

"I warned you to avoid anything to do with strategic services." Demek chided.

"I cannot accomplish anything always taking the safe route father."

"You have not even given me grandchildren, you are too young to be this consumed by your ambition. You still have many years to advance your career." The older man almost seemed to plead with the senator.

"What kind of daughter would I be if I didn't use every advantage you gave me and continue to honor the family name through service?"

"The kind that would give me grandchildren! Your brother..." He couldn't finish, his expression becoming bitter.

"We do not know if he is dead or not. He could still be alive." Takal stopped in her tracks, her own robes rustling about her as she did so.

"I do not like the odds."

"We still haven't heard from the human government, it is possible..." She let the bitterness tinge her voice, their recent attacks could simply be retaliation but it seemed unlikely, perhaps if political dialogue was opened the humans would stop attacking.

Demek's face washed out in surprise and concern, "You mean, you didn't know..."

"Didn't know what?"

"It is not my place to say." He turned away.

"Didn't know what? Father...what don't I know?"

"I cannot speak on this now, we will discuss this after." He began striding away, irritation and urgency clear in his steps.

Takal watched him as he went, her own expression showing hints of confusion and more than just a hint of betrayal, as if she was still somehow on the outside...the child that was never meant to be the chosen one, the face for the family, the source of the parents' pride. It had to hurt her, the fact that her father's expectations for her were so low; he had simply wanted her to marry and produced babies, a fairly low aspiration for many Romulan women and usually the lot of lower born women. Valaris suspected Demek's goals were born more out of a desire for his daughters security and happiness more than some lowered expectation having witnessed the dynamic in his own family. But how did you say that to an ambitious woman like the senator?

"Come, we must present your findings." She began walking towards the senate chamber, her steps half-halting as she spoke a final concern, "I trust there is nothing terribly compromising in your report?"

"No, senator, based on our analysis of events, there was absolutely no way we could have adequately foreseen their campaign against us, our understanding of the martial capacity and practices is far too incomplete." Valaris replied, "The thing that bothers me, though..."

Takal stopped in her tracks turning, her demeanor suggesting some unanswered concerns could either be laid to rest or bared for the potential disaster they were, "What?"

"Before the incursions even began fourteen ships went missing from the Rokar Defensive Cordon, after the fact we just had to assume it corresponded to the incursion but..." He paused, unsure how to finish voicing his concern.

"But, what?"

"All evidence seems to suggest the human warships entered our space through the Varsekar Defensive Cordon twenty six light years core-ward of their patrol area."

"Sounds like an over zealous group commander."

Valaris said the next words very slowly, very carefully to let it all sink in, "They never reported back in. They are still missing."

* * *

><p>The CIC was quiet, the barely audible buzz of equipment and the quiet murmur of the crew all the sound that was present, in many ways it had been just like this during the operations in Romulan space save for the undercurrent of tension, apprehension, maybe just a little fear. None of that was present now, but there was a new almost oppressive blanket of emotion weighing down the bridge; war drive, locked, cocked and ready to rock, too much testosterone, not enough outlets. Almost word for word the cautioning from Doctor Goodson days before sprung back into Trip's mind.<p>

Somewhere between the joy of victory and the agitation of combat readiness there existed a kind of strange psychological limbo; being on edge almost to the point of going stir crazy but bottling all that energy into careful reserves that could be called upon at a moment's notice. Most people didn't think there was anything special about a Marine or Sailor that could go from asleep to full geared and ready to man a post for combat in less than two minutes. They would always say, "I've had to rush before." The story of the alarm clock that didn't go off and then them rushing to prepare for work or school or whatever it may be. Twenty minutes of fumbling had a way of evolving into five when the story was told, and the self deception lead such individuals to believe that such feats on the part of men and women in armed service was a trifling matter. What they didn't understand, even if they could see through the self deception was that these sailors and marines did it day after day, weeks upon weeks sometimes, able to lie down for sleep after literally days of waking stress and when awakened less than an hour into much needed shut-eye would be alert and ready to fulfill their duty, sometimes in mere seconds.

The kind of mental conditioning, physical discipline, pure willpower that was needed to operate on that level of functionality was special and often overlooked as those who possessed it often presented as brash and sometimes childish. It was why society often looked down on them as individuals while heralding the generic archetype; it was simple to hail the hero, but difficult to live with or among them. The true tragedy was just how little was understood about the dynamic even after all the wars of the twenty first century. The mental condition was easy to turn on after all the training and in the environment that called for it but was so hard to really turn off. Some individuals could suppress it all, put on the smiling face and the bold front for others to see while they still quietly seethed inside, others struggled day in and day out, their bodies still screaming at them to prepare for the shattering stress of combat that rent the impossible boredom of regimented routine indicative of prolonged combat deployments.

Five days ago a Fire Controlman approached him with a complaint, "Sir, is there any way we can get the cooks to put more salt in the food?"

Trip had been confused, everything tasted fine to him and he had been eating the same impersonal factory food as the rest of the crew. It didn't strike him until much latter what it was, this was the subtle and quiet form of PTSD that had been all but overlooked for centuries. Take a man, put him in life-threatening danger day in and day out for days, weeks, months on end and in the moments where he was not actively involved in the defense of his own or other lives, keep the constant threat that at any moment their lives could be in jeopardy over their head.

It wasn't that Petty Officer Gutierrez's food needed more salt, it was the fact that with all the sudden stress dump, a body that was now no longer being forced to work at its pinnacle every minute of every day, that strange after-action depression was setting in that crept up on you without you even realizing it was there. So in effect Emilio Gutierrez was walking around carrying all that baggage of his wartime self, a self that would rip free two hundred pound ammunition flexies to attach another feed in a matter of seconds during pitched battle. To this new and sedate Fire Controlman first class Gutierrez the world was a bland and flavorless place and God, science, politicians, levitating pasta creatures...whatever, help him should he continue to find it so.

"Sir, we've got emergency flash traffic on the p-keck."

Tucker turned to look over to the communications and radio intercept station, Petty Officer Nadella staring at him with a sort of odd inscrutability. The last time they had received a message via the Priority Quantum Entanglement Communication Channel it had been to order _Tirpitz_ to link up with Task Group: Linebacker to invade Romulan space. As it was they had only been back on the friendly side of the water for five days and already they were about to get tossed back into the suck, or so it seemed.

"Might be nothin' mister Nadella."

The broadcast operator just nodded, "Aye aye, sir."

"Kick it over to the shack, I'll take it there." Trip was trying to act unconcerned, nonplussed and casual, knowing full well that there would be nothing remotely casual about traffic sent via the PQECC by way of flash traffic.

Trip walked into his private briefing room, praying silently that it was not going to be an order to rearm, refuel, and get back into the fight in Romulan space. As far as he was concerned, they had done more than enough, bloodied their noses more than adequately and had done an admirable job breaking in the ship. There were a few kinks he wanted to work out of a few of the systems, he'd already devised some upgrades and the detection protocols should be turned into firmware to make sure anyone could use them, but other than that, he was relatively satisfied with the ship.

The question now was what fool's errand did they have for him now?

Once the hatch was secure he punched in an access code to permit the feed to be routed, there was no video layer, only audio with the PQECC broadcast standard, it kept the complexity of the Quantum Entanglement projection system simplified. "This is Tucker."

"Captain Tucker." It was Admiral Sanderson.

"Yes, sir."

"We need to you to set course for Krios Prime, best possible speed, we have received a request for aide from official government channels." There Admiral was terse in his declaration, Trip was uncertain if it was out of some sense of necessity or due to the fact that Sanderson was an avowed critic of his person.

"Sitrep, sir?"

"Redcon two, potentially hostile situation developing in the region."

Trip grimaced, knowing that his due diligence as captain would earn another mark against him in Sanderson's book. "We are bingo ordnance, sir."

"Our reports seem to indicate that should be sufficient, the Kriosan government will brief you further once you are within communication range. I am granting you full authorization to take an aggressive defensive posture, any potential political ramifications can be ironed out later, they called us, understood?"

Trip was a bit concerned by this, but was at least relieved at the fact that Sanderson was willing to stand in his corner as far as the politics were concerned. "Aye aye, sir, will expedite."

"Any further questions?"

"Are there any other ships in the region capable of response to the situation?"

"None that can be there within the projected time table you can manage with Tirpitz." Sanderson didn't give any indication that he believed Trip was trying to skip out on the mission, nor did Trip give any indication of his growing sense of discomfort and dread concerning a certain Kriosan noble with whom he had enjoyed a rather terse sexual relationship.

"Understood, sir, we will develop the situation in accordance to S O P."

"Good luck Tucker, do whatever the situation calls for and get that new boat out in once piece, understood?"

"Copy that, sir."

"Sanderson out."

Trip stood silently for a moment, mentally fighting back the urge to scream. This was supposed to be a shakedown cruise for God's sake, not the "Trip Tucker and Tirpitz Team Fix the Known Universe Tour." It was a widely accepted fact that you did _not_ send a warship returning from combat into another crisis scenario without giving adequate time to repair, refuel, rearm, and refit as was necessary. And, of course, you sure as hell didn't send a fucking prototype with the paint still wet into a combat situation..._ever_. Maybe they really didn't like him, or more so they didn't like Admiral Black and this would be the most effective, and expensive, two-birds-with-one-stone in human history; discredit Black, kill off Tucker, no more anyone rocking the boat, it would only cost about five to six hundred lives and a few billion in appropriations. He couldn't help but chuckle, not at the grim humor of the idea but at just how ridiculous it was to even think that was the case and exactly how out of touch he would really be if he believed it for more than a passing second or two.

Well, there was no better time to try to push the 8.6 Envelope then, if they could get to Krios fast and get the situation resolved, whatever it was, before it could deteriorate further then the sooner they could head back to rearm and go about their original shake-down. Expediency would also, likely, ensure that they came out of it in one piece. So far _Tirpitz_ had fared well against the competition but at least part of that was likely due to the fact that the competition had never been able to adequately engage. That was a virtue in its own right, but one had to be sure about this sort of thing. Every sailor and marine on the ship was counting on this boat being able to wade into the thick of it when necessary with little to worry about.

Turning back to the briefing room hatch Trip mentally steeled himself. "Do whatever is necessary," those were the kinds of words that preceded the opening shots of a war. What they had done over the previous eight weeks, that wasn't war, that was just extension of a conflict that had been going on since the Romulan task group sunk the two Andorian cruisers. Something told him, however, that this was going to end up ugly, a lot uglier than Sanderson was willing to mention or voice as part of the orders. REDCON two meant that combat was eminent, the very real possibility that they would be dropping out of warp with guns blazing wasn't lost on him. If there was a serious strategic issue that would require global level threat reduction he could only count on thirty kinetic kill attacks. The M706 rounds just wouldn't cut it for precision massive ordnance attacks, it was amazing the difference thirty five kilograms of payload made.

There was always the option of utilizing the Starfish for high altitude EMP attacks, combined with standard electronic warfare protocols they could effectively gut the entire infrastructure if need be. Last option, no...beyond the last option. If Krios was as cosmopolitan as he had been lead to believe doing something like that would be the same as sentencing hundreds of thousands to death as the entire grid including food production, environmental control, water processing, and medical services would be shut down indefinitely. It was almost more human to just drop kinetic kill ordnance on them...at least that had a limited area of effect.

What the hell was the issue anyway? Were they under attack? Was it a plague? Was there some sort of anti-aristocracy revolution going on? No way to figure it out before they got there. Finally finding his nerve, Trip pulled the hatch open and entered the CIC.

"Mister Delacroix, do we have coordinates for Krios?"

The Burgundian crewman nodded, "Aye aye, sir."

"Set a course if you please, Mister Delacroix. Mister Cotter, once course is laid in, get us underway, best possible speed." Trip looked around the CIC, marveling to himself how much the echo shift personnel looked like kids, a fact that was, perhaps, exacerbated by the fact that none of them were over 25. He silently mused on whether any of them realized that they were making way to another fight and if they knew how would they feel about it. Nobody here was about to ask him about it, for guys this young Trip knew he had an air of infallibility that was actually a beneficial thing to nurture. Sailors and Marines that had confidence in their superiors tended to perform better and, in doing so, tended to have better survival odds. Hesitation was death, judiciousness was safety, and obedience was a virtue...or something like that, he barely remembered the training rhetoric anymore. Half the crap they shucked out at the academy was forever lost to memory and had been replaced with practical knowledge. Still, nothing prepared you for the potential of being the one to start a war or, at the very least, to drag your side into one that was already brewing.

* * *

><p>Valek looked up again at the guard tower, the past six days an Andorian named Dholl had been on the over watch. Dholl was a singly unpleasant being, given to indulging his rather specific dislike of his Romulan charges and prone to looking for any excuse to heap on abuse. He had replaced Corporal Welles who had manned the tower six days a standard week since their arrival at Joint Base Weytahn, a fact that none of the men in Surat's cohort were happy about. Welles was fair, respectful, even pleasant at times, as a soldier the young human understood the concept of soldiers obeying their orders and as such held not particular animus towards the Romulan prisoners as a whole. The fact there was a human Marine once again in the tower manning the dreaded M-430 was a relief do merely to the fact that any given human operator was less likely to use it than Dholl was to use his Andorian plasma rifle.<p>

"That is not Welles." D'Varr mumbled, looking up at the figure.

Valek looked again, indeed it was not, his bearing was different, more severe, and he was actually carrying the M-430 as opposed to the way Welles left it attached to the pintle mount. There was something dreadful, ominous about the way he left his hand resting on the upper housing the of the weapon, as it hung from a sling around his neck and shoulders. It became readily apparent he was much bigger than the Corporal, a fact that was alarming in its own right considering how strong the base-line human seemed to be.

"How good is your human?" Valek inquired of the Uhlan.

"What tongue? There are at least seven that I have identified."

"Absurd..." Valek shook his head, "Which is the most commonly spoken?"

"English it seems, though there seems to be no end to the variations in that language alone."

The guard in question seemed to manage the large weapon with ease, these humans were strong, most seemingly more so than their Vulcan cousins, but this man seemed to carry the armament as if it were almost weightless. Valek had been tempted to believe, at one point, that the human weapons were light weight given their relative size. It wasn't until Corporal Welles had explained that the fully loaded "machine gun" weighed seventeen kilograms that Valek began to ask questions about their equipment in depth. He had learned that the average marine carried thirty seven kilograms of equipment in addition to their primary weapon and whatever else the individual soldier deigned necessary. A "war" pack, as Welles had described it, could weigh upwards of sixty eight kilograms once the weapon was added into the equation.

"Can you communicate adequately in that tongue?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Find out who he is, where he hails from, maybe find out what happened to Welles."

"I will attempt to do so, sir."

Valek listened as D'Varr raised his voice, speaking in the ridiculously guttural and overly complicated human tongue. How the Uhlan had managed to pick up a functioning understanding of it so quickly was something of a marvel to Valek who could barely understand a word of it. It was like all things about these humans, deceptively barbaric but hopelessly complex; verb tenses, past forms, pronouns, inflection cues that could change word meanings beyond just declarative, interrogative, or exclamatory. The human's voice was gruff, matching perfectly with his demeanor and the aggressive lines of the markings embedded in his skin visible on his forearms. Valek noted the tightening of his hand around the grip of the weapon he was carrying, but his fingers were still clear of the trigger. But there was threat here, danger, this man could be more of a power to reckon with than Dholl.

D'Varr leaned in close, "This man just transferred here from Vulcan, Welles' was restationed to Shi'khar."

Valek swallowed, "Was he...?"

The uhlan anticipated the question, "Yes, he was one of the men we fought against."

Valek spat an oath, this was bad indeed, this man's hatred of Romulans was probably still a burning hot goad. "What did he say?"

"To please stand back from the dead line."

"That's all?"

"Besides what I have already told you." D'Varr quipped at his superior.

"Did he seem angry to you?"

"All humans sound angry when speaking their own tongue...have you not noticed that before?"

Valek furrowed his brow, rubbing the stubble on his chin thoughtfully, "Welles never seemed to sound angry."

"Because he was speaking in our language."

Valek arched both brows in subtle surrender to the point, "His grammar was horrible though."

"He did have issues with indefinite articles, but considering how long he had been at it, he spoke fairly well."

"I will grant that." Valek looked up at the guard again, the hard set of his jaw, the coldness in the eyes, just the sheer hugeness of the human and felt a slight shiver of fear, "Find out what he wants from us, what we can do to make his task less disagreeable, I do not want him as an enemy."

"It will be done, Centurion."

* * *

><p>T'Pol cocked an amused brow at Commander Hernandez, she had been visiting frequently while <em>Enterprise<em> underwent repairs to make her space worthy. The level of damage had been much worse than had been initially estimated and while it was still cheaper to repair her than to prematurely decommission the ship, it was a close margin. It was strange, but with the relationship between the two no longer one of subordination, she found she could speak with T'Pol quite comfortably and that the Vulcan could be unexpectedly candid.

"We didn't." T'Pol answered quite frankly, holding her cup of tea inches from her lips.

"In over a year on Enterprise you two never once...fooled around?" Hernandez was flabbergasted, she had just assumed they had been very careful not to get caught.

"Not while we were on active duty, during periods of leave however we felt no such inhibition." She took a sip, swallowed, then added as further qualification, "except during the expanse, of course."

"So there wasn't some secret method for sneaking around huh?" Erika sounded a bit crest-fallen.

"I am certain one exists," T'Pol declared, taking a moment to ponder her answer, "I am just, at present, unaware of one. Is there a reason you are asking?"

"I suppose it can't hurt to tell you at this point." Hernandez sighed.

"That is, perhaps, a bold assumption to make."

Erika gave her a wry look, "Vulcan's value individual privacy."

T'Pol's eyebrows once again climbed towards her hairline, a rather sedate approximation of amusement, "You make a good point."

"Jon and I are in one of our 'on again' phases and I think its a bit more serious than before." She just let it all spout out before her better judgment would allow her to tamp it down and close it off. She was dying to tell someone, and T'Pol seemed to be in a uniquely better position to understand, as strange as that was to say.

"And as the two most senior officers on the ship..." T'Pol half nodded, understanding the dilemma.

"We're not really that worried about setting the example and professional integrity, we just don't want to get caught." Ah duplicity, that age old practice, to thine own self be true was fine up to a point...that point was when it interfered with professional obligations.

"That could be problematic, the assumption that I was emotionally and sexually ...unavailable...diverted a fair amount of inquiry from my relationship with Trip."

Did she just call him Trip?

It came out so naturally, so easily, as if she hadn't once had to consider his rank, title or position. He was just Trip now...her husband, her lover, the father of her child.

Erika marveled at how much she had seemed to change. The professionalism she knew before seemed all but gone, and in its place there was kind of a subdued and restrained grace. Elegant...that was it, she was elegant in a very calm sort of way. A proto-matriarch, almost regal in her own right in her light long sleeve blouse and form hugging slacks.

"You sure have changed..."

T'Pol cocked a brow again, this one more inquisitive than amused, "How so?"

"Well, frankly, T'Pol, you were something of a hard ass."

"A virtue of superior genetics."

Damn, she was getting good at that, the wise cracks seemed to flow from her with a sort of practiced ease, almost like she was working from an already established script.

"And I guess now you're just a smart ass." Erika grinned at the Vulcan.

"Life with Trip has forced me to constantly 'be on my toes', his propensity for verbal humor and sardonic observations has forced me to learn to give as good as I get." T'Pol lifted her eyes, looking over Hernandez's shoulder just as the sehlat came bounding through the room with a stocking footed Solan chasing behind.

"Solan."

The child skidded to a halt, not turning but remaining in a semi-hunched stillness waiting for admonishment or order to be issued.

"Indoors is not an appropriate place for games of pursuit."

"Kuhkay." The child replied then began his pursuit again at a slightly more-than-brisk pace.

T'Pol rolled her eyes and took another sip of her tea, but her expression didn't seem to indicate exasperation or even a hint of irritation, in fact if Hernandez had to judge she would say that the Vulcan seemed amused by her child. She had seen irritation from a Vulcan before, but nothing about this reaction felt like anger or frustration, maybe there was a bit of consternation at childish intractability but there was something else there that was absolutely universal and impossible to miss; a mother's love.

"Are you and Trip planning on having more?" Erika asked in a low almost conspiratorial tone.

"I can say with relatively certainty that we will not be able to avoid doing so."

Was that a yes? Well of course it was a yes, but what kind of yes? Something about her was unreadable now, was this how a Vulcan got moony?

"Are you happy, T'Pol?" It was sort of an overly frank and generalized question, the kind that women knew meant in the grand scheme of things, maybe not right this minute, but in the long run...

Mentally, she steeled herself for a convoluted reply, perhaps and explanation of the lack of Vulcan emotionality, a failure to understand the significance of the concept, how being happy was not strictly logical. Any number of possible pedagoguish replies sprung instantly to mind.

"Yes."

What...in the actual...

Yes?

A Vulcan just admitted to having an entire series of emotional responses and had just done so without so much as a moment's hesitation. How would she even respond? Who would even believe it was possible.

"Well, that's good to hear."

* * *

><p><strong>[Author's Note]<strong>

**I hate transition chapters...**


	35. Chapter 35

"General quarters, general quarters, all hands to battle stations, this is not a drill. General quarters, general quarters, all hands to battle stations, this is not a drill."

"Remove safeties on capacitors for batteries eight, fourteen, and nine. Demil HE quick."

"Contact four hundred seventy three thousand kilometers moving away thirty eight degrees to port, at point zero two five echo."

"Confirm IFF, mister Gunderson."

"Contact confirms as Kriosian, captain."

"But is it friendly..."

"Sir, we are receiving traffic from the Kriosian ship."

Trip nodded to his executive officer, who was still holding the hand-set for inter-ship communications. Al-Sistani didn't bother to ask why he wasn't taking the call himself, but wasn't going to avoid the opportunity to practice his basic diplomatic procedure.

"Put them through, mister Cooper." Nassir intoned calmly.

"Unidentified craft, this is the Kriosian Imperial Cruiser Matullasa, please identify." The male voice on the other end was firm but polite.

"Copy, Matullasa, this is th Tirpitz, commander Nassir Al-Sistani speaking, we are responding to your government's request for United Earth Nations Military Command Starfleet assistance."

He glanced back to the captain, wanting confirmation that his response was the judicious and appropriate one, as he turned to look he took quick stock of the LIDAR display, nothing else was squawking within the immediate two point five million kilometer radius, so it wasn't likely they had tipped their hand to potentially hostile forces.

Tucker nodded again, indicating he was satisfied with his executive officer's handling of the situation so far, a fact that gave Sistani some added confidence, Tucker had been in many of these situations before, it was still something new to the younger attack boat commander.

"We were informed to expect your arrival, Tirpitz, we just had not expected a battle cruiser to be dispatched."

"Does our presence present additional concern?" Al-Sistani inquired, coolly. Prompting an approving nod from his commanding officer.

"Specifically, no, we would actually approve of the tacit show of force."

"Acknowledged, Matullasa, are there any additional protocols we should observe?"

There was a moment of pause, silence on the other end, there was likely some debate occurring on the Kriosian cruiser's bridge even now. A standard CG class cruiser more than adequately outgunned a Kriosian combat cruiser, and the Iowa class battleships had no compunction about showing off their thicker armor, redundant shield arrays and roughly six times more effective fire-power. Trip leaned in close to gunnery control, his voice low and measured.

"Tyner, get me a firin' solution for the Matullasa but do not paint 'em, understood?"

"Aye, sir."

The junior petty officer began working a firing solution without having to divert any of the fire control LIDAR transmitters onto the Kriosian ship. They all knew what it was, caution, covering their ass, discretion being the better part of valor. If the Matullasa fired once, they wouldn't get a second opportunity. There was a possibility that their social customs dictated they remain silent until a best possible response was determined when presented with a question they had no rational answer for, but required a response. Tucker, however, wouldn't give them the opportunity to abuse a trusting nature.

"Does your maximum speed exceed warp six, Tirpitz?"

Nassir let out an inaudible sigh of relief, "That is an affirmative."

"Very well, we will relay coordinates for system approach, it would be more expedient if you proceeded ahead as we would be unable to match your top speed."

"Affirmative, Matullasa, we will comply. Is there any further information you can provide on the current disposition of the matter our assistance was requested in regards too?"

"I am not authorized to say at this time, Tirpitz, upon beginning the approach to Krios prime you will be met by the battle cruiser Gidulla, they will relay the pertinent information at that time."

"Understood, Tirpitz out." Nassir replaced the hand-set as the intercom speakers cut the transmission.

Tucker shook his head slowly, "Somethin' smells funny about all this..."

Sistani crossed over to the captain where he stood near the gunnery station, Tucker's demeanor was dour and bellicose to say the least, something about this mission clearly didn't sit right with him, but the Iraqi officer couldn't put his finger on what exactly. He did, however, intend to find out with all possible expediency.

"What's eating you, skipper?"

"Somethin' is goin' on here, I can't figure out what exactly, but we're not gettin' the whole story from anyone and I don't like bettin' on a horse I've never seen before."

"What are you thinking, sir?"

Trip rubbed his chin thoughtfully, contemplating what posture they should assume, what contingencies they should prepare. Tucker had made it clear from the moment he announced the new orders to Sistani, Musashibo, and the various department heads that he did not for one second like the idea of going into a potential combat situation against a possible enemy of unknown size and disposition without a proper weapons compliment.

"I don't wanna compromise our defensive posture, I want all possible extraction options open if we have to insert personnel on either their ships or the surface of the planet proper, I wanna see increased security at all mission critical areas of the ship, at least two platoons on MARSOC ready for rapid deployment if needed, and full standby personnel."

Nassir nodded, it was sound thinking, maybe just a little paranoid, but let no man accuse Charles Tucker of not throwing in with everything he had when situations turned to fighting.

"You're gonna be in the big chair if any diplomatic crap has to go down. I'll be expected to act as UEN representative pro tem, understood?"

"You got it, skipper, someone has got to break in that seat." Nassir suppressed the smirk, but just barely prompting a grin from Tucker.

"Don't you go gettin' too comfortable."

Al-Sistani did smirk this time, "Going to want it back, sir?"

"Hell no, A. G. Robinson is just a total asshole about anyone sitting in his chair." He didn't grin again, as a matter of fact there was something bitter in his expression.

"It's your chair first, sir."

Okay, so that was a fishing expedition, but he was going to figure out one way or another whether Tucker intended to stay with _Tirpitz_ and her crew or not.

Trip had been unmistakably moody ever since receiving word of the mission to Krios, he had interacted little and talked less over the past four days making way for their territory. Most of his time had been devoted to cataloguing and trouble shooting some minor issues they had discovered during the time across the Romulan border. At first he thought it may have been a combination of fatigue and the after-action let-down until he realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that something about this mission was bothering him specifically. There, right there, the way he just adjusted his thigh holster again, it was a perfect example of the issue.

"Have we received the coordinates?" Trip barked, getting an affirmative from Cooper then turning to the navigation station, "Lay in that course mister Eddy, best possible speed."

Tucker turned and began heading for the briefing room, stopping mid stride to lean in towards his XO, "Do me a favor, grab Major Musashibo and both of you meet me in the shack."

Nassir nodded, "Roger that."

Sistani watched as the captain made for the closet-sized office, already pulling off his soft cover to run a hand exasperatedly though his short hair then adjust his thigh holster again. Maybe they'd get some answers out of him in the privacy of his office.

"Mister Snellis, you have the conn, try to not get us into any battles before me and the major are finished talking with the skipper." Nassir grinned sardonically at his former XO.

"No promises..."

* * *

><p>If Nassir had been physically capable of overpowering and physically throttling the breath out of the series five Marine officer, he would have. There were boundaries of couth, limits to what could and should be said, Tucker might not <em>technically<em> been his immediate superior, but the Captain did have operational jurisdiction and the Major's mandate was to facilitate that.

"So which ex-girlfriend are you not eager to see again, Captain?"

You just did _not_ ask that kind of question of your superior. It was ridiculous, overstepping, rude, and probably fallacious anyway.

"And thank you for remindin' me of that particular issue."

Nassir did a double take, going from the major to Tucker and back again, "Wait...what?"

"I had a...fling, I guess you could say...with a Kriosian princess before my wife and I were an item."

Benkei's lips curled back into what had to be the best cat-with-a-canary grin Sistani had ever seen. "You are absolutely unreal."

"Rub it in."

"I swear, I'm going to get you some ivory handles for your fifty two."

Tucker frowned, "I'm not that eccentric."

Commander Al-Sistani cleared his throat, pulling the attention back to the reason they had been called there, and more than just a little aghast at the past indiscretions of his commanding officer, "What exactly did you need to speak to us about, sir?"

"Right, thank you Commander..." Trip folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against the bulkhead, "I can't help but think that this is gonna turn ugly, and I didn't get any indication that we were respondin' to a natural disaster or anythin' of the sort. From that I sorta have to assume this is a situation that could deteriorate in a big hurry. I'm on the diplomatic end of things, but I wanna platoon of Marines with me, that means I want your best, alright Benkei?"

"You've got them, sir."

"Good deal." Tucker turned and looked at his XO, "Nassir, now this is gonna be rough, but I want you or Snellis in the CIC any time I'm not on board, is that plausible?"

"I'll make it happen, Trip."

Tucker nodded, smiling a little, "I appreciate it fellas, I know we were sorta countin' on havin' at least a few weeks stand down after that crap in Romulan space...but..."

"Si vis pacem parabellum, sir" Musashibo intoned.

"Eo ire itum audaciter." Nassir added with equal fervor.

"Yeah, yeah, morituri nolumus mori."

Both men stared back at the more western associate, blinking in mild confusion, this was a new one on them. Every officer knew the mottos they had intoned, but Tucker had, once again, thrown something new into the mix.

Trip grinned wryly with an over-all tired expression, "We who are about to die, don't want to."

* * *

><p>T'Pau was surprised to see V'Kara sitting outside the house in the courtyard. She appeared to be meditating, a fact that caused the younger minister immediate concern. It was possible that Colonel Shelby was having an episode again, and if V'Kara had sought refuge outside the house it was likely violent. His episodes had become less frequent and violent, instead he seemed to have found some sort of regimen, pushing his body physically with exercise as a sort of proxy for meditation.<p>

The elder Vulcan's eyes popped open as T'Pau entered the courtyard, "Peace and long life, minister T'Pau."

"Is Colonel Shelby having an episode of particularly emotive behavior?"

"No, he is currently performing a series of exercises."

T'Pau archer a brow, "Is it wise to leave him alone?"

"Mister Shelby decided he wanted to listen to some manner of human music that I found disagreeable so I decided to remain outside until he has completed the calisthenics."

T'Pau furrowed her brow, "He selected the music specifically?"

"That is correct. I am of the opinion that his capacity to understand language was not nearly so effected as was his capacity to use it."

"Most fascinating, I believe it would be prudent if I arranged for an appointment with a human neurologist to check the status of his neural injuries. I have read that the human brain has been known to adapt to the damage of areas specifically associated with a certain portion of their function by utilizing other areas to perform the specific functions."

V'Kara nodded, clearly not that interested in the vagaries of human neuro-physiology, "It has been some time since you last visited, I believe you will be pleased with his physical well being."

"What has provoked the change?"

"I took the liberty of altering his diet. He seems to be functioning better with a human diet."

T'Pau arched a brow, she found the human diet repellent, far too much grain and dairy, and of course the consumption of flesh was barbaric, but then again, there was something uniquely barbaric about them, that was perhaps part of their mystique. Colonel Shelby was one of them, as barbaric as them, she had witnessed him kill personally. There was still some very primal and instinctive part of her who found that strangely enticing, the fact that he could and would kill, to protect her specifically. Logically she knew it had been his duty to do so; Arch Angel actual would not have trusted her defense to another. That day now seemed like it had been years ago, she wondered if he was still quietly tortured over the death of master gunnery sergeant Reichauer.

"So the difference is pronounced?"

V'Kara arched a cryptic brow, "Perhaps you should see for yourself, if you can tolerate his choice in music."

"I have grown somewhat accustomed to what passes for human music."

The elder Vulcan approximated a shrug, "Very well, I have experienced human music as well, this is rather coarse compared to their greater contributions."

Entering the house her ears were immediately assaulted by the sounds of percussion and magnetic registration stringed instruments. The sounds low and guttural accompanied by harmonic vocal solos from no less than three voices, each singing a different verse. She had heard similar music in Maggie's Drawers and again on the _V'slan_ as well as when studying human cultural concerns. She had always assumed that Colonel Shelby would have had slightly more sedate musical tastes. From what she understood of the genre of music she could tell that these performers exhibited a higher level of virtuosity and there was a strange element of harmony too it.

When she finally spotted Colonel Shelby she was shocked by the development from the last time she had seen him. It was her first time seeing his shirtless form and while the scars from the plasma mortar still showed heavily on his skin, his physique appeared excellent. His legs were together, sitting flat on the floor, toes pointed as he pulled his chest and abdomen flat against the tops of his legs, his bared spine curved as he stretched the muscles of his lower back and abdomen. The appearance of atrophy had been all but eliminated, replaced with the lean sinew she knew had been the previous hallmark of his physique.

Releasing his legs he placed his hands, palms flat on the floor, on either side of his hips and rolling his shoulders lifted himself from the seated position, his legs still locked straight and elevated from the floor. He let out a single hissing breath then began to slowly rotate his torso upwards, drawing his legs back and past the arms into a hand-stand. The slow movement intrigued her as she watched him manipulate his body into the confident handstand. She marveled at the symmetry of the body, the unadorned musculature, the healthy color of his flesh pinked with heat and slick with exertion. His odor was much more pronounced now, much to her chagrin, likely a result of resuming a human diet and at least partially due to his current physical exertion. It was one of those things she found herself remembering with a strange kind of fondness now.

She imagined that this had been closer to what the original Colonel Wayne Shelby had been like as he bent his arms, dipping into a pushup then returning to the rigid handstand. His augment genetics were obviously doing a fantastic job restoring him physically, all it had required was the correct fuel. She would have to insure that V'Kara had sufficient budget to ensure that the diet for the colonel was maintained. It was at that moment she realized that she was, indeed, experiencing an emotional response, she _wanted_ the old Wayne Shelby back, she was willing to go to extremes in order to attain that end. She wasn't sure exactly what it was that was triggering the response, but the irrational need to know that he was healthy and whole was overwhelming.

It was regrettable that his capacity for speech still seemed...he certainly was very well built...impaired by the injuries...what incredible flexibility, and stamina, clearly he possessed the capacity for prolonged exertion...otherwise they could perhaps converse as...the graying of the hair, so very distinguished...what was I thinking?

Thoughts derailed.

Total loss of focus.

What was going on?

T'Pau felt an unexplained surge of heat in her face, neck and ears, the three positively scorching as her scalp prickled. It was growing harder to breath, as the sensory input of sight, smell, and sound began to overwhelm her and she could no longer filter it all out. She turned away to step out of the house, Shelby still hadn't noticed her mercifully as she would have been ashamed to have been seen in the moment of failing composure. She needed air, it was clearly to hard to breath in the house right now, as everything began to be overwhelmed by his scent and she couldn't breath because of it. She was almost certain she might collapse before she even made it to the door.

She exited the house only to find V'Kara attending to a shrub in the courtyard, her expression reproving at the clear flush in the minister's face. "Did he attempt some form of impropriety?"

"Has he attempted such with you?" T'Pau was shocked, but also relieved that her shame had been overlooked.

"No, however..." V'Kara stopped suddenly, the understanding choking off the remainder of the thought, "I see... It is possible that you may be experiencing false plak tow. It is not completely uncommon for young Vulcan women to experience sudden hormone surges that mimic the blood fever on a short term basis."

T'Pau may have been quite accustomed with the cultural history of her people, but V'Kara had been a medical professional since long before she was born, without a doubt her knowledge of such matters far outstripped hers, so it was only natural that she defer to the experience of her elder.

"What would be the logical response on my part?"

The nurse shook her head slightly, "It will likely pass quickly, an hour or two at most, but there are other issues you have to consider, minister. Issues you will likely not want to hear."

"What do you mean?"

"As with the blood fever it is mostly an instinctive response..." She measured the next words she said carefully, "to one whom you are attracted too."

* * *

><p>Suvak sat with his back against the wall of the small chamber that had been set aside for him. The ancient masonry digging into the skin of his back as he pushed harder into it, the physical discomfort distracting him from the mental and spiritual anguish. His third pon farr was upon him in full force now, initially he had considered wandering off into the forge and letting it finish him off, but he still had a duty to perform and he had never been apt to shirk. Better he mortify himself for a week, experiencing it all in full force, than to abandon what he felt he was obligated to do, undo years of training and a successful career. Of course there was also the part where hyperthermia was a horrible death that tended to leave a particularly undignified corpse.<p>

He was still clutching the bottle of bourbon, a distinctively un-Vulcan item that had almost been confiscated until he had applied his rather unique blend of persuasion to the matter. Part of him was certain it was the only way he would be able to focus enough on slaking the drive to mate. He had sort of hoped that enough liquor would have rendered him unconscious so that he could possible forego much of it to begin with. The problem was he felt that he was actually managing the strangely contradictory feat of drinking himself sober.

More than sexual desire, rage, anger, lust, he was experiencing a profound sense of guilt. The lowering of emotional inhibitions had resulted only in him getting an extra huge helping of survivor's guilt. He had shrugged the robe they had given him off which was now gathered around his waist as he tried to dig the edges of the stucco wall into his flesh. Maybe part of him was trying to use the self-injurious act as punishment for surviving where Gaddson had not, for killing so many Romulans and not being killed himself, for being the one who made it through whole.

Hours earlier the priestess who had volunteered to help him through his Pon Farr had performed a mind-meld to biologically sync herself with his body, inducing a lessened form of the blood fever in herself. She was probably about ten years younger than him, but she seemed to have had a great deal of experience with this sort of arrangement. Vulcan's institutional whores...he couldn't really think of it in any other way. Other races, at the very least, paid money up front and took the extra step of calling them prostitutes, but on Vulcan you were a priestess. If it had been any other time than his own pon farr he would have found the idea intriguingly erotic, but right now, in the actual throws of blood fever he could only think on it in matter-of-fact disgust.

The door to the chamber opened and she stepped inside, still wrapped in her light weight gown that marked her station. Suvak cut eyes over at her for a minute then looked away, her skin was flushed a deep olive hue indicating that the time she had spent in meditation had been sufficient for her body to synchronize. He lifted the bottle to his lip and took another pull at the liquor inside, swallowing with a grimace.

"You will not need that." She said softly, almost too softly for a Vulcan.

"This is my pon farr, I am permitted to behave irrationally, I do not need this, I just want it." He held up the bottle as he growled the words.

"Why do you wish to dull your senses?" Her voice was very smooth, calming in its own right, which was why it was having precisely the opposite effect on him.

"Because there is nothing I would rather be doing less than sitting in here right now waiting to bed some stranger I had no interest in knowing three hours prior to fulfill some biological mandate."

"Is your mate unavailable for you?" She almost sounded tender, it just made it that much worse, he would have preferred recrimination and judgmental chiding to this.

"I am unbonded, I have no mate." The growl still present in his voice, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall as he tried, with little hope, of burning a hole in it by force of will.

"I see." He heard the rustle of fabric as she let the gown slip off her frame and to the floor, he didn't even bother to look over, didn't want to see, didn't want to find any sort of arousal or fulfillment in this at all, he just wanted to slip off into nothingness. "If you do not desire to utilize me, I will find another priestess to assist you."

"I do not wish to utilize any of you." He roared, standing up and fixing his eyes on her, "I'd rather go out into that desert and die than have to go through this absurd farce every seven years, but I still have a duty to perform."

She canted her head to the right slightly, listening with an inquisitive expression as he railed against his own biology.

"Humans mate when they want, where they want, with who they want. They can suppress their urges, control their sexual drives. They live with their emotions, their desires, their needs and wants every day, sun up to sun down, waking, sleeping, it's always there and they get to control it all. They don't throw it in a closet or hide it in a cellar, they live with it on their faces and in their hearts their entire lives and we call them savages? We should be following their example, not looking down on them because of it!" Suvak bellowed, the walls of the chamber doing surprisingly well at absorbing and dissipating his shouts.

He wanted her disgusted, he wanted her to leave, he wanted to be left with no option but to die himself because he couldn't help but believe that he didn't deserve to still be alive. Survivor's guilt, post traumatic stress, depression...human terms all of them, but they were right, nobody ever got away from all the horror and destruction completely clean. He thought that his Vulcan reserves would allow him to process all those emotions, but the fact was that all they had done was bottle them up until they became a bomb. When she lifted her hand he was almost certain it was going to be to strike him, instead her fingers traced along the line of his left ear.

"Why did you volunteer?" He croaked weakly, it was just too hard to let the argument persist and the emotional response was surprisingly draining. He, who had always believed himself to be too emotional, was drained by emotion, it may have been that he was simply more frank than the average Vulcan and not any more emotional.

"Because I could see that you needed me too." She replied with the same softness as before. "I do not pretend to understand what torments you, Suvak, but I know that it would be an inexcusable waste if the universe was to lose you to a ridiculous biological mandate."

"But why you, specifically? I have to believe there is a reason."

"Because _I_ knew, specifically, that it would take something special to slake the plak tow in you." Her hands were now removing the ties to the robe around his waist, letting it fall away leaving him just as naked as she was.

"How could you know that?" He had a little fire back in his voice now, suspecting she was doing what humans called 'blowing smoke up his ass'.

"You are the first man I have ever seen or heard of that arrived at this temple with a human escort, wore human clothes, and had a human hair cut." She kept her mirth barely suppressed as her own inhibitions had begun to fail as the sympathetic blood fever pushed her reserves to their breaking point. Her hand was now firmly plucking the bottle away from him and sat it in the cut-out alcove that acted as a shelf in the adjacent wall. "Was the human your t'hy'la?"

"No, he was a subordinate."

"You must be very important." Her words got softer, as she leaned in closer to him.

"I have significant enough training to avoid disclosing potentially valuable information so you can save yourself the trouble."

"If I wanted information from you that was of a delicate nature...I would have it." Her hand slipped down, cradling the tacit display of his instinctive need to mate.

Suvak narrowed his eyes, his expression at once skeptical and, perhaps, a little amused in spite of his general level of frustration. "You are very good at this, aren't you?"

"I have had a great deal of experience."

* * *

><p>Kaitaama paced the audience chamber, reflexively tracing the same patterns she had as a child along the marble tiles. When she was a girl it was a hop from tile to tile, slowly spiraling inward to the center of the floor then back out again, even now she found herself almost mechanically stepping from darker tile to darker tile, mimicking the old method. She thought about it for a moment, willing herself to break the pattern, to step half way between tiles or to step on one of the lighter ones, yet still found herself predictably trying to continue the pattern.<p>

Seventeen minutes ago the _Gidulla _spotted the human warship leaving Warp, the monstrously huge ship dwarfed the cruiser, the strangely simple glyphs that the humans used for their language adorning the disk shaped section of the ship on both top and bottom hailing it clearly as MCS. The markings U.S.S. were comfortingly familiar, but the name as it was pronounced by the commander of the _Gidulla_ seemed frightening to her. _Tirpitz_. Coarse even by the standards of their coarse language, perhaps that had been one of the thing that had always made Charles Tucker seem more appealing than the other humans, the soft almost lazy way he spoke their language made it less stressful on her ears before the translation matrices had synced.

The commanding officer had apparently demanded that he be able to beam in with a security detail, a concession that her ministers had acceded to as they were relying specifically on human military might to help leverage their current crisis.

"First monarch...the human delegation has arrived."

Kaitaama turned on her heal to look at the messenger, one of her husband's stewards, something of a spineless sycophant in his own right, but at the very least honest and loyal, the ability to judge character was one of the traits she admired about her husband, and this steward at least exemplified his ability to choose subordinates that fit a position well. As loveless as their marriage was there was no animosity between the two of them, they shared a bed occasionally and had made passing attempts at producing an heir. There had been no success in that regard yet, but both acknowledged the necessity that they eventually do so. She did not begrudge him his dalliances as he had made no attempt to ensure her fidelity; it was purely a marriage of convenience for both and while they did not experience the first inkling of love, they did seem to have a sort of easy friendship that was only strained by the expectations of their union.

"Inform the captain of the guard I wish to meet them at once."

"Eminence, is that wise? These men arrived armed." The steward was of indeterminate age, but his manner bespoke the behavior of an older man even as his voice seemed to indicate youth.

"Of course they arrived armed, the humans we requested are warriors." She summarily snapped, her safety was of secondary importance now, the fate of her world and its people took primacy. "I cannot remain aloof if I wish to appeal for their aid."

"As you order, eminence, I will inform the captain of the guards."

It ended up taking another thirty minutes of arguing with the captain of the royal guard and four ministers before they would finally allow her to meet with the human delegation. No, that was not correct, they had not allowed anything, she had made it clear she would meet with the humans no matter what, even if it meant she had to go to them without an escort and dragging a guardsman from each arm and leg. So they had relented, the guard captain arranged for the security detail while the minister of state smiled wryly, telling her how much she reminded him of her grandmother.

She wondered if her grandmother had at one time been a spoiled brat too. The kidnapping had cured her of that, that and a certain MCS Commander named Charles Anthony Tucker III. It had been almost surreal at the time, the kidnapping itself had happened so quickly, but her rescue had been almost to bizarre to be real. The Retellians that had held her had attempted to leverage _Enterprise_ with threats that they would kill both commander Tucker and her if they didn't allow them to escape. At the time she had wondered why the MCS warship would so readily stand down. Captain Archer had explained latter that they had never surrendered, they had just simply deployed a different weapon; Charles Tucker himself. The havoc he had been able to wreak on the ship had eventually forced the Retellians to use the threat of decompression to force her and her savior into an escape pod and ejected them. After a day of traveling to the nearest habitable planet and two days on one of the island's beaches they were rescued.

In that time she had allowed herself to be swept away by Tucker's natural charm and the allure of his natural abilities. It took another week for them to locate and link up with a Kriosian warship to conduct her back to Krios prime and in that time she got to see the level or martial discipline and effectiveness of the humans, she also go to enjoy the remarkably torrid relationship with Charles "Trip" Tucker who was apparently as proficient a lover as he was an engineer and warrior. Yet, for some reason, she had not heard a thing from him for close to three years now despite her open invitation for him to come visit her.

At present the delegation was being held in a courtyard just outside the palace proper, apparently as a concession to the security administrator who did not want to allow the armed human escorts inside the halls of the seat of the First Monarch. As she approached she spotted the familiar sight of human camouflage and combat equipment. A knot of their marines were standing between the center of the courtyard and the colonnade lined halls leading to it. These men appeared even better equipped and ferocious than the examples she had witnessed aboard _Enterprise_ and her guards instinctively stepped forward to place themselves between the humans and herself. It was a pointless act, she had witnessed first hand what a human could accomplish with just his bare hands, there was certainly no way her guards would be able to accomplish anything should the marines decide to attack. One of them broke from formation, approaching another group further into the courtyard, snapping to attention and saluting before speaking. The men parted as a marine with black helmet and body armor began to approach. As he drew closer she saw a slowly spreading smile crossing his face, a face that was suddenly very familiar.

"Well, I 'spose we keep meetin' under less than pleasant circumstances."

"Commander Tucker?" She couldn't hide her shock.

"It's cap'n now, actually." He reached up and unhooked the chin strap on his helmet, removing the head covering and stick it under his left arm, "The USS Tirpritz is at your disposal, first monarch, now what seems'ta be botherin' Krios?"

She had already pushed through her guards and reached him before anyone could react in protest, her lips already locked to his as her hands held his head in place. He had not visited, had not sent a message, had not even written in the intervening three years, but at the moment she was more elated to see him than she was mad at him. None would question her about this, it was an unspoken fact that everyone knew that the marriage was just a show, and while her husband allowed himself to enjoy the open ended nature of it, she had remained relatively chaste, partially because of a continued hope that one day her Starfleet Prince Charming would return. He seemed to surprised to react, his lips didn't move, nor did his hands, he likely hadn't expected this kind of reception, or perhaps he had deigned to act with the dignity associated with his station.

She reflected, in the part of her mind not completely absorbed by the flushes of affection and passion, that she was actually behaving in a way unbefitting of her status. She would have to contain herself for now, but tonight she would have him in her bed again, and then she could focus on everything she had wanted to do for the last three years. For now she was Kaitaama, First Monarch that ruled over the glorious and fair people of Krios, she had more dignity than to visibly throw herself at the feet of a mere warship officer...she was just showing the appreciation of her people. Showing her appreciation in a way she found particularly pleasant at the moment. Her guards started suddenly, taking threatening steps forward resulting in a suddenly bristling threat of violence from the MCS Marines.

Tucker pulled away and raised an arm, "It's alright, stand down L T."

One of the Marines, a young but particularly hard looking man nodded, his voice gravelly and merciless sounding, "Aye, sir."

The Marines seemed to relax, their hands loosening from around the grips of the primitive ballistic thrower weapons they still carried.

"Are you the delegation?" She asked trying to regain her composure. There would be more than enough time to indulge her less-regal desires with Captain Tucker after protocol had been satisfied.

"Sorta', we were the fastest ship they could sortie out here. We're ready to render aid where ya need it, ma'am."

She frowned at the very mention of the threat that loomed over her world, she almost snarled the words. "It's the Klingons..."

Trip tried to keep from frowning, instead his face went almost expressionlessly bland, his pupils retracting and his easy demeanor somehow becoming more rigid. At that very moment the rest of the Marines with him all began to react, standing more straight, heads swiveling to survey everything, respiration growing deeper. It was almost disturbing to watch them all suddenly change demeanor and behavior.

Charles finally spoke after a few moments pause where the strange unconscious reaction occurred among the assembled humans, "Oh...them..."


	36. Chapter 36

**[! Author's Note !]**

**Unless I am just totally overwhelmed with inspiration (heh, yeah, like that'll happen), this should be the last chapter for approximately two weeks to a month while I am attending to business and several events that will keep me away from my word processor. Lucky y'all, right? And don't worry, I do _actually _have a direction I'm going with all this beyond the "Revenge of the Exes" trope.**

* * *

><p>"So, what was your overall impression of the report sub-commander."<p>

"It is just T'Pol." She corrected.

"Excuse me?"

"I am no longer a sub-commander, I resigned my commission with Vulcan when I left Enterprise to give birth. It is improper to address me by a military rank I no longer possess, I am simply T'Pol or, if your proclivities so dictate, Missus Tucker."

Commanders Clay and Booker stared at her blankly for a moment as if utterly confused by what she had just said. Perhaps it was simply an inability to reconcile the unerring frankness of Vulcan personalities, it might be best if she ameliorate the situation with humor.

"I have also been known to respond to 'hey you', 'ears', and 'momma', if the situation dictates as well."

Was it possible to "die on stage" when the audience didn't seem to have a pulse?

"My impression of the report was that everything seemed to be largely a logical presentation until I began analyzing the strategic framework of it."

The commanders nodded to one another and Clay spoke up again, "Please continue, missus Tucker."

Before she could speak, both men turned and went wide eyed in surprise or fear as the sehlat lazily meandered into the room, crossing over to the bay doors and settling himself down in a pool of sunlight. On his heels, predictably, her son followed, crossing to the couch on which she sat with his awkward toddler's steps then climbing up the piece of furniture, settled down next to his mother, leaning against her as he did so.

"Pardon me," she looked to her child, "Yes, tal-kam?"

He babbled softly in reply, "Wanbe wif momma."

She looked down at him, gently running her fingers through his hair, "Very well, but please do not interrupt."

The child smiled back up at her, "k-kay."

She looked back at the two MCS officers, "As I was saying, if you analyze the defensive deployment patterns they seem to follow a randomized patrol schema that places all areas within the immediate defensive cordon within scan range of a sortie group. I did, however, note an anomaly. One certain dates there is a corridor, thirty eight light years long and one eighth of a light years wide that extends from key locations on the frontier all the way to seven key strategic targets." She looked back to her child, "Can you show me where one is?"

The toddler brought his hand up to the PADD she was holding pointing to one of the visible gaps in the fields of blue indicating the maximum scan range of the patrol patterns. "Dis."

"Very good." She replied, her approval reward enough for the young half-Vulcan who smiled happily and leaned his head into the side of his mother.

The two MCS officers looked to one another and nodded, Booker began to reach into a pocket on his NSUU, "We're sorry missus Tucker..."

Immediately she tensed, if she kicked over the coffee table it would give her enough time to grab Solan and leap over the couch. Their sehlat would attack the perceived threat, likely incapacitating one of them if not killing him outright but would likely, himself, be killed by the second. In that time she could reach the bedroom and the MAR-12 located there-in. From there she would be able to reduce whichever one remained and make it too the car with her son to escape.

"...but we had to be certain your findings matched ours." Booker produced a communicator from the pocket and set it on the coffee table.

"T'Pol, this is Admiral Black." The comm unit issued the modulated voice, "We had our suspicions about this as well, but we needed an outside opinion."

"I do not understand the subterfuge, Admiral." She replied, calming now that she understood there was no threat.

"Well, to be honest, we need another analyst, one that isn't tied into the chain of command and, frankly, one with the kind of skill set you bring to the table. This report is actually three months old now, and we identified it and the author as a potential security leak." He paused, sighing audibly, "We had to run it through ever analysis matrix we had before we picked up on the pattern, it only took you a week. We understand you have a family now to think about, but we would be interested in bringing you on-board as a civilian analyst for SID."

"So the reports I have been analyzing over the last month were a test of my analytical capacity?" She arched a brow, marginally irritated that she had been deceived.

"We are sorry for that missus Tucker, but the usual recruitment and vetting process wouldn't exactly have worked in this situation." Clay replied.

She inclined her head to the side, her suspicion at the unusual breach of standard protocol evident. "I was not aware that MCS was involved in recruitment for SID."

"We aren't." Booker said flatly, the declaration brokered no contest, it was operational language that T'Pol understood all too well. Nothing official, plausible deniability, we have no knowledge of this...reroute money, assets, capabilities in such a away as to appear that nothing is happening. Agents were simply contractors, petty bureaucrats with an office and a title that helped cover the fact that their business was, in all actuality, espionage.

"I trust there will be no necessity for me to be separated from my family for extended periods?"

"You're just going to be an analyst, there shouldn't be any field work at all." Black's voice buzzed in reply.

T'Pol cocked a brow that she was aware the Admiral had no way of seeing, "That is precisely how most field work begins."

"Well, we had kind of hope we could keep you close and provide a cover by offering you a teaching position." The communication issued.

A teaching position...that would be surprisingly agreeable, she had always sort of assumed at some point her career path would have led to that eventuality. But, there was the fact that her son was just barely over year old now and within two years pon farr would necessitate a leave of absence up to a month in length, now might not be the most practical time for this career move to take place.

"While I would find such an idea agreeable, I do have certain responsibilities as both wife and mother that could be impeded by a teaching career." She answered flatly, "I am also relatively sure that such a position would require relocation on my part which would be a decision I would have to include Captain Tucker in."

"Already took that into consideration, its a practicum for the department of electronic warfare at Annapolis...four days a month is the lecture load, no need to relocate at all, and since it is Annapolis you'll be authorized for site to site transport from Canaveral."

And she had always heard of Admiral Black's thoroughness in a negative light.

"I will require time to consider this offer. Though I suspect if I had not stipulated as much you may have withdrawn the offer."

There was a chuckle at the other end of the comm, "I keep forgetting you were at this when I was still in grade school."

"I am not _that_ much older than you, Admiral." T'Pol protested.

Clay looked over at Booker, his eyes wide and mouthing the words, _Older than Black?_

"When should we expect and answer by?" Black inquired.

"When I give it too you." She countered succinctly.

"Very good, missus Tucker."

"There is one other issue that must be stipulated for." She said, shifting a little as she did so.

Over the comm Black's voice became very strict, "Commanders, give us the room, please."

Clay and Booker rose, the slightly shorter fair haired clay already heading for the door to the back patio with Booker following a few steps behind. The men reached the exit point and promptly stepped outside, pulling the door shut audibly behind them.

"What was it, T'Pol?"

"I suspect you have no intention of allowing Trip...Captain Tucker from resigning his commission." She replied evenly.

At the other end Black was silent, clearly formulating a reply to the rather unceremonious broadside from Tucker's wife.

"Admiral?"

"Yeah..." He sighed, "What to say... We were planning on attempting to discourage him from doing so, he has proven to be a competent CO so far and we kind of wanted to keep someone with the proper fit for Tirpitz in command."

"This was at least part of the motivation for approaching me, was it not? The belief being that if I am kept suitable occupied mentally I will be less likely to voice discontent with my mate's absence."

There was a dry chuckle from the comm, "You really were the best possible pick for the job, this just proves it."

"I can see the logic in your desire to keep him in command of the Tirpitz, it benefits everyone to keep an excellent commander in a position to use his or her skills, and I will be willing to assist in pushing the point with my husband for a single stipulation."

Black's voice took on a cautious edge, "And that would be...?"

"At some point I will undergo a certain...medical issue that will require the direct intervention of Captain Tucker."

"Pon farr..."

T'Pol straightened on the couch, "How did you-"

"I read a lot, ma'am, I understand its cyclical for male and female Vulcans up until their early hundreds, correct?"

"Yes, that is correct." She felt a flush of discomfort and embarrassment.

"It was also my understanding that the...treatment...didn't specifically require a Vulcan be with his or her bonded mate." Black's voice had an inscrutable edge to it.

"That is technically, true..."

"But...?"

T'Pol tried to regain some composure, logically there was no cause for embarrassment now, Black was approaching it in a suitably Vulcan way. For humans, the idea was lurid, frenzied sex to slake a life or death thirst that drove the most disciplined of Vulcans to raving lunatics craving, needing sex to survive. Black seemed to be looking at it as a very basic biological necessity, a debate left for evolution and not needing of consideration of supposition. From this perspective, she could speak without shame, "I do not desire to have anyone attend to me sexually other than my mate."

"Blackmail from a Vulcan...man I wish I could write this down, has to be a first." Black let out a rueful chuckle, "So what exactly would have to be done?"

"If events allow, I would require conduct to the Tirpitz so that we could complete my pon farr and transport back to earth afterwards."

"That's all...?" The admiral sounded plainly mystified at how simple the demand was.

"Forcing him to be pulled from duty would be less efficient and provoke more questions." T'Pol paused, "I value my mate's privacy as much as my own."

"T'Pol..." His voice indicated amused incredulity, "Do you really think people won't wonder why his wife suddenly showed up to the ship and has him cloistered in his quarters for up to a week on end?"

"I simply believe they will respect him enough to believe it is none of their business." She answered succinctly.

The chuckle could be heard again, "Alright, you twisted my arm, we can get you to him pretty much wherever he is within a week, will that be sufficiently fast enough when your symptoms start to become noticeable?"

"That should be sufficient, Admiral."

"Out of curiosity, how imminently are you expecting this to become an issue?"

T'Pol raised her brows, mostly to herself as an instinctive reaction to what her next words would be, "Approximately seven months."

* * *

><p>Trip strode down the long marble hall, the generally open architecture and columns were giving it all a very high-colonial Mediterranean feel despite the fact that many of the architectural conventions were decidedly different. The ostentation on the columns was a sort of stylized upward turning spiral carved into the marble itself. It wasn't uniform and there really was no pattern, if it hadn't been for the uniformity at base and cornice he would have assumed it had been the result of natural formation, instead he decided that it must be the artist's rendition of wind or air currents. Everything was in very practical earthen shades, beiges and browns that in most situations would seem rustic except for the complexity of the pattern of the tiles and the high shine produced by meticulous polishing.<p>

It was the kind of architecture that would have demanded dress uniform, instead he was following down the hall in boots and gear that still had a layer of fine dirt from Twenty Nine Palms. The stock of his M-7 Mod 2 clapping loudly against the magazine pouches attached to his plate-carrier.

"Wait, let me get this straight...you've only been lookin' at three Klingon battle cruisers, and they've been bullyin' your entire territory?"

"Our fleet only consists of nineteen warships, Captain." One of the ministers replied with no small measure of indignity.

Tucker grimaced, so they were under powered and short on numbers and spread over way too large a territory.

"Did they issue any demands or did'ya do somethin' to get on their nerves? Violate their territory, annex a major industrial center...insult their mother?"

Kaitaama spoke up before any of the other ministers could interject supposition or opinion, "We actually haven't heard anything from them, nor that they taken any overtly hostile action other than invading our territory."

"Well, far be it from me to attempt to provide any coachin' in the area of diplomacy, but did you try askin' 'em politely to leave?" Trip smirked a little.

Kaitaama turned and gave him that same patently fake-outraged glare, the glare that said "God you're charming, but I just have to give you a hard time about that one" he had seen quite a bit from her over the course of their little love affair. It was the absolute _last_ kind of look he wanted to be getting from her right now. "They were not responding to our hails."

"So has your relations with them been antagonistic up to this point?"

"We have had no diplomatic relations with them up unto this point. There was occasional trade, but nothing by way of a relationship between their government and ours, we had hoped your people would be able to provide additional information on the basis of your previous contact with them." Another one of the ministers, a slightly older, short, semi-rotund man, replied.

"Our dealings with the Klingons have tended towards the..." Trip tried to decide how to say 'we kicked their asses around for about eight months to make a point' without saying 'we kick their asses around for about eight months to make a point' and wasn't being struck by some sudden abundance of verbal eloquence that would be appropriate outside the lower decks of a warship, "antagonistic..."

"Precisely what we are looking for." The man who spoke was perhaps the oldest looking of the ministers present, and the tallest, having the force of personality one expected from a politician. The other men were all bureaucrats, which was to say they were mostly spineless pencil pushers and numbers jockeys safely ensconced in the government system with no fear for the loss of position and no concern over outside scrutiny.

At least with a politician you knew where you stood, which was to say you knew that unless you were beneficial for them in some capacity you didn't really matter. It was impossible to get a read on the other poobahs. Stuffed-Shirt the Greater was clearly a warhawk, or at the very least had a bone to pick with the Klingons. The various lessers were probably more concerned with avoiding anything that drew attention to their respective officers and posited questions regarding what possible failing on their part had allowed the threat to their hegemony to occur.

"So you want us to head out there, track 'em down and put the boots to 'em medium style?" The words had left his mouth before the officer training cadre instructor in his head could even start screaming at him about appropriate behavior and protocol.

Still, the way he figured it he and his ship had been called out here to be the bully boys, buttons pushers, ticket punchers, nail drivers...the extent of their purpose here was to kick ass and take names for the betterment of Earth. Having Krios owing them one might not amount to any real political capitol, but you never knew when you'd have to call in a favor from someone who was conveniently placed.

"Actually, we are counting on your presence to make the Klingons more amicable in regards to a diplomatic solution." Kaitaama replied, then paused as she considered her next words, it was something of a hint, something of a fishing expedition. Krios was still largely in the dark regarding the capacity of human ships, and while _Tirpitz_ was a large ship, it might not be a match for three Klingon Battle Cruisers, "We had not anticipated your government would deign to place a single ship in this much danger through, should events turn for the worse."

Tucker rolled his brows upwards, his expression humorlessly frank, "Don't you worry 'bout that. Tirpitz is a battleship in every sense of the word."

"Battleship? I am not accustomed with that terminology." One of the lesser stuffed shirts quipped without the slightest varnish of diplomacy.

"Its what ya' send out when you need to kick a buncha cruisers' asses, sir." Trip replied with more than just a hint of an edge in his voice. He hadn't signed on to be a diplomat, he was, first and foremost, a problem solver. It didn't really matter if the problem had to be solved with a hyperspanner, diagnostic programs, or with body bags; he would solve the problem in the best and most expedient fashion.

"I do not think that would be prudent at this time, the situation is far to delicate for Krios."

"Wait a sec...you said they _weren't_ respondin' to your hails...did that persist?" Trip stopped dead in his tracks, the pieces were starting to fall into place, "These weren't just some raiders lookin' to make some trouble, were they?"

Kaitaama turned to her ministers and her security escort that was nervously watching Tucker and the two marines with him, "I need to speak with the Captain in private, now."

The marine that Tucker had referred to as "L.T." snapped to attention, his voice still seemed impossibly gruff and his expression improbably bitter for all his apparent youth, "By your leave, sir."

"Carry on, lieutenant."

The two men turned and began walking back towards the courtyard, allowing time for the first monarch to marvel at how heavily equipped they were. She couldn't begin to understand the necessity or purpose for something of the things they wore. The pack was self explanatory, but the long antennae apparatus and pouches, the small metallic cylinders and spheres hanging from their load bearing equipment, the strange pattern in their clothes, the heavy vests and helmets all seemed too strange to her. The fact that Captain Tucker was garbed almost identically except for the black material of the vest and helmet just helped compound the perception of how strange these humans were.

"Come with me, Captain." She spoke imperiously, but was secretly eager to get him away from prying eyes and somewhere that she could enjoy his presence in private.

"Yes, ma'am."

She led down a small hallway and through a door to a large office type room, marble and carved wood adorning every fixture. Trip marveled at it all, it had to have been built like this centuries ago, but everything was so perfectly pristine and almost alive, not like the stagnant and mortified type of "historical preservations" he had seen on Earth and Vulcan. He wondered if the rest of Krios was this elegant, if it were, it was in serious contention for the "honeymoon spot" he would take T'Pol once he completed his active service.

"Have you been well?" She asked as she pulled the door shut.

"Did you hear about Vulcan?"

"There has been some word that there was an attack by the Romulans, were you involved?"

Trip rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, "You could say that, yeah."

The door swung back open and Stuffed-Shirt the Elder stepped into the room, notably without the presence of security or various sycophants, so this guy was clearly a career politician in the most classic sense, a real servant of the people sort who believed running a nation was a sacred duty. Kaitaama just looked at him incredulously, "Arjen..."

"Kaitaama, I served the government with your father for twenty years and I have seen petty Klingon raiders come and go, I can't let you represent this as that again." The elder man declared, it was a reasonable explanation but probably also partially an excuse to help prevent any unbefitting behavior on her part.

"I was going to make no such representation." She turned back to Trip, "There are representatives from the Klingon Empire on Krios right now. They..." She paused, crossing her arms into an almost cradling positions and sighing, "They have stated their intention to annex Krios."

She watched carefully, and saw the bizarre reaction begin occurring in Charles again. His pupils retracted, the entire set of his face changed, the lower jaw protruding with muscles bunched in the jaw, his back straightening more so than before and his shoulder rolling to widen the sweep of his arms. When he spoke his voice had a dead quality too it. "Where are they right now?"

"What do you intend to do?" Arjen asked in a confused voice.

"If there are fewer than fifteen on them, I'll kill them. If there are more than fifteen of them, I'll grab my marine section and then kill them."

Kaitaama stepped forward, placing a hand on his right arm, "No, Trip...don't, they..." she sighed again, "they have some support within the government. Some Kriosians think we would be better off as a client state of the Klingon empire."

"I can kill them too if necessary." He replied, the loose and slightly abnormal way he pronounced words replaced with a merciless tepidity of voice.

"No, Trip...please..." She had seen him like this during the course of her rescue, she had not understood the behavior at the time. A little over a year later a high profile trader named D'Marr had commented at a state dinner function that humans were capable of activating an instinctive hyper aggression center that tripled their effective strength and reflexes. "It is in all our interest if your presence simply gives us the ability to put them off by negotiating from a position of strength."

"If that's what you want, but I've dealt with their kind before, and its usually just easier to make sure you don't have to bother negotiating."

Of course...the scars.

She got to see them with vivid clarity on the beach where their escape pod had touched down. And then, of course, there was the sex...she had been able to actually touch them then, feel the imperfection of tissue where they ran across his sides and around his back. When she asked where they came from he had been rather vague; "did you hear about the Klingon incursion five years back?"

Of course she had, and indicated as much, but he said nothing else, just shrugged.

"That kind of thinking doesn't solve diplomatic crises, captain." Arjen retorted with more than a little unvarnished ire.

"When they've invaded a few of your worlds, you might think differently." Tucker countered, his eyes still cold and calculating. "Since they're already here, you're half way on that one. Way I see it, you've got an incident on your hands either way...question is which one is going to allow you to come out ahead?"

"What do you mean?"

"If you try to talk them down with the whole 'we've got MCS in our corner' angle, you lose every bit of leverage you have once Tirpitz jumps out of system. So you can either make it worth Earth's while to maintain a permanent surface combatant presence on Krios to make sure if the klinks come a'knockin' again we can make sure most of them don't go home, or you can shock them with brutality right now...unless of course you want to just let them annex the planet, so I guess you have three options in that case."

Kaitaama stared in plain, unmitigated awe. Who was this and what did he do with Charles Tucker? There was a kind of seriousness here that she didn't see in him before, and she found it strangely alluring.

"Now if you ask me, I'd say you just point me in their direction, I walk in there, put a couple two hundred grain eight point sixes in each of 'em, then we tell the cruisers they have exactly five minutes to get the hell out of the system before I start dumpin' what's left of my rail gun ammo into them. And that, if I'm really annoyed, I'll pull the capacitor safeties off my phase cannon arrays and have a great ol' time checkin' for coil integrity. But, that's just me, I'm not a politician, I'm not out to win any prizes for popularity, I've just got a job to do and the job, as it seems to be to me, is to make sure you don't have the klinks take away your national sovereignty. If I got that wrong, please correct me."

Arjen stared at the younger man, eyes narrowed trying to get a read on him. Trip had made no compunction about laying it all out there in the most brutally frank language imaginable. "You would be willing to start a war with the Klingon Empire to help the Kriosan people?"

"Well, sir, way I see it, we've technically been at war with the Klingons since they hit a little farmin' town on Celes two."

"It was my understanding you beat them quite soundly, captain." He replied, his face still hard and unyielding.

"They didn't apologize..."

Arjen let out a loud barking laugh, "Now that's diplomacy. I suppose the stories about you humans are true, crazy to the core and just good enough to back it all up."

"No, not _just_ good enough...we're _more_ than good enough." Trip rested his hands on the stock of his rifle, "So how are we gonna play this?"

Kaitaama looked between both men, wondering if the tacit establishment of pecking order had been resolved finally. One of the things she had found enticing about Trip had been the fact he never seemed to need to mark his territory, she wasn't so certain if that had been what he was doing now or if the Klingons just managed to rouse some special degree of animus from him. "We have parties negotiating with the Klingons now, I will instruct them that human assistance is present and this will allow us to give them a good scare, perhaps defuse the situation entirely."

Tucker shrugged, "Might could do just that...but on the flip side, if you decide you want 'em all schwacked, you know who to come to."

Arjen took a purposeful step back, "I will go make sure the instructions are relayed."

Kaitaama nodded, glad to finally be free from the doting minister and maybe, finally, getting a chance to talk to Charles alone. "Very well."

The older man left the room, pulling the door shut behind him, before it had even returned to its position seated in the frame she was already walking over to Trip, she supposed it might be best to engage in some small talk before expressing her dissatisfaction at what she construed as his neglect of her over the past three...almost four years.

"So you were involved with the fighting on Vulcan?"

Trip sighed, is expression becoming suddenly quite bitter, "Yeah...I was acting commanding officer of Camp Kelly in Shi-kahr for most of it."

"Was is bad?"

Trip was irritated already, and he snapped out a reply, "No, it was just like a big vacation. Instead of golf and shuffle board we killed Romulans and put dead marines in body bags."

Kaitaama recoiled slightly, there was something truly different about him now, every bit of his demeanor had changed. She lowered her head, "I'm sorry."

"Nah, I'm sorry...I didn't mean't snap at you like that. It's just kinda sore subject with me. We lost alotta good people on Vulcan, nobody should have to witness that kinda stuff."

"I am glad you made it out alright."

Tucker bobbed his brows, "Not sure any of us managed that."

"So you have been busy these past four years?"

"You could say that...first the Xindi attacked earth, then the Romulans attacked Vulcan, then I was designing the boat we got in orbit right now." An eventful four years to be certain, so much had happened in that time, so much had changed. There was one very important change he really needed to bring up now too, one he was loath to mention because he could almost predict the kind of reaction he would get. "A lot changed, I actually-"

He didn't get to finish, "Tirpitz to shore party, come back, over." The ULF receiver on his LBE crackled to life.

"This is Alamo actual, send traffic."

"Copy, Alamo, echo whiskey detects three surface combatants seventy five thousand klicks solar moving towards planet at point zero two five charlie, hull configuration and IFF confirms Klingon, objects designated Novembers zero five through zero eight, over."

"Tirpitz, interrogative, class type on the Klink boats, over." He looked at Kaitaama with concerned eyes.

"Alamo, Klingon surface combatants conform to battle cruiser specifications, over."

"Copy that, keep me advised, Alamo, out."

"Are they moving closer to the planet because you are here?" She asked, uncertain of exactly what she had heard.

"These are new contacts, they weren't in system when we showed up."

Kaitaama's eyes widened, "What does that mean?"

"It might mean they're tryin' to force the issue." He brought his hand up to the hand receiver on the ULF transmitter, "Alamo one, Alamo one, this is actual."

"Alamo Actual, this is one, over." It was the gruff voice again, this time rendered even rougher by the transmission medium.

"Be advised one, potential kilo lima ground action, we have zero three large surface combatants closing planetary, over."

"Interrogative, actual, request reinforcement from Yamabushi?"

"Roger that, one, request release of third section, lima oscar delta, on you, how copy?" Trip replied.

Kaitaama wondered if her universal translator wasn't working, almost none of what he was saying made any sense at all. All the words were being translated, but their arrangement was twisted into something completely indiscernible.

"Solid copy, actual, contacting yamabushi for release of third section, will keep advised, Alamo one, out." He was already making for the door, taking the helmet out from under his left arm and setting it back on his head.

Kaitaama closed, placing a hand on Trip's arm, "How bad is it?"

Tucker shook his head, "Three battle cruisers can carry around eighteen hundred Klingon troops on the conservative end of things. If they beam in right in the middle of your capitol, well...that's pretty much all she wrote, they can secure or kill your entire government in a matter of hours."

She looked at him without the slightly compunction to hide her alarm. "Can you do something about it?"

"Well, I can pull the whole MARSOC battalion down here and I can pretty much guarantee you we'd be able to kill every last one of 'em if it came down to it, but it would get ugly fast...that's the down side to urban fightin'. If they move to within five hundred kilometers of the surface Tirpitz will move to interdict."

"But you're only one ship!"

"Don't you worry your pretty lil' head 'bout that. We could go toe t'toe with about five of 'em without too many worries." His expression promptly hardened, "I'm more worried about civilian casualties if I had to pull the choke chain off my dogs down here."

Kaitaama looked back with eyes that did little to hide their level of unpleasant surprise at the implication. "Are they..."

"No, no, darlin', its not that they can't be controlled, those boys know where and when to shoot, these are some of the best marines MCS has ever produced, I just can't speak for the klinks."

Damn, his confidence was attractive.

His entire bearing, the impression that he could control the entire situation at a whim...

Just a snap of his fingers...

A single imperious point...

A spoken word and he could make all of it go away, for the time being anyway. She had to keep him around, not just for her people but for herself too. She would redouble her efforts to produce an heir so she would be able to devote the rest of her time on being with Trip. There had to be _something_ they could offer MCS to keep them around, to keep Tirpitz warding Krios where Tucker could be come the great heroic colonial commander, the dashing foreigner who guarded Krios against its enemies.

He was at the door, his hand grasping the handle purposefully, it was that confidence, that drive that just helped compound her attraction to his wit, intelligence, and utter disregard for her station.

"Will I be able to see you tonight?" She asked him quietly.

"Not sure that's a good idea, darlin'..." His voice dropped noticeably, "It's really only fair I tell you, I'm married now."

In one ear, out the other.

Does not compute.

Cognitive dissonance.

She just blinked at him with confused eyes, unable to reconcile what he just said. "What?"

"I'm married...I love my wife and love my kid, and even if I didn't, there are some lines I just won't cross."

Her head was swimming now, like all the blood had rushed into it and just as promptly rushed right back out again. Brain reeling, chest pounding, a sensation of heat running through her body as her stomach seemed to drop out through the surface of the planet and into the super-heated mantle.

"When..." She couldn't complete a sentence, "Who?"

"Way I understan'it you're married too." He smirked, brow arched.

"It's..." She sputtered, still trying to find a focused through, "...we're..." She sighed, clearly frustrated, "It is a political marriage, we do not expect monogamy from one another."

"Well, me and my missus expect fidelity from the other." He commented, trying to defuse the situation as best he could.

"Who did you marry?"

She had to know, had to know what won out, what beat her.

She could find some catharsis in knowing she was bested by a superior rival.

"You remember sub-commander T'Pol?"

No connection.

"The Vulcan?"

"Yeah," he nodded, "her."

No connection.

"What about her?"

"Well...she's the mother of my lil boy. I love my lil boy to pieces." He opened the door, stepping into the corridor before turning back, "I'm mighty fond of his momma, too."

T'Pol?

T'Pol?

T'Pol!

Of course, that frigid Vulcan bitch. Haughty, disapproving, logical...so completely Vulcan. She remembered her judgmental look when they had found them on the beach. Her disapproving glare, her patently Vulcan disgust at anything that didn't conform to-

Wait...

That wasn't what that look had been about. It hadn't been that at all.

It was jealousy...the Vulcan frost queen had been jealous, jealous that someone else was getting to touch him, be familiar with him, had slept with him. The green blooded witch probably didn't even realize it at the time, but she was jealous and feeling territorial the same way Kaitaama was feeling now. But if that was the case, it meant that T'Pol had been attracted to him all that time. She understood that kind of look too, you often didn't realize you were attracted to someone until something threatened to take them away.

It wasn't any less frustrating, but she couldn't help but feel a little intrigued now.

Time to take the long view; the affairs of state held primacy right now and while she still felt the roiling anguish of unrequited attraction, she realized she needed to be at least as professional and focused on the problems at hand as he was.

Who knows, she might be able to coax a little moment of weakness out of him, she figured he owed her that much at least for making her pine for him for four, now going on five, years.


	37. Chapter 37

"Report, lieutenant." Nassir barked, doing his best not to sound as exhausted as he felt.

"They got to within fifteen thousand kilometers, we ran out batteries five, twelve, and nineteen they turned to heading three four niner and moved away at full impulse."

"How close did they get to planetary line of departure?"

"Five hundred eighteen klicks, sir." Lieutenant Gosset replied evenly.

Al-Sistani chewed on that information mentally, found it largely indigestible and spit it back out synthesized into a plan of action. "Mister Crawford, take us in another thousand kilometers closer to the planet, maintain effective coarse and heading, geosynchronous over the capital, understood?"

"Aye sir, adjusting relative position and updating navigation charts."

"Very good, mister Crawford." Nassir took a deep breath, he was far too awake to get back to sleep now, might as well start his shift early. He had been availing himself a cot just outside the CIC in an action ready billet. Seventy eight hours since they had arrived above Krios and the situation seemed to be in complete stalemate. All the negotiation was completely one sided; the Kriosians negotiated with the Klingons and MCS was being held as the trump-card-in-reserve.

The tension was seething on _Tirpitz_, some of the crew and Marines had been around for and participated in the 47 war, and there was still a burning desire for reciprocity against the Klingons who, most felt, had never been adequately punished for their belligerence. Captain Tucker had issued a single and solid order: if they got to within seven thousand kilometers of _Tirpitz_ or two hundred kilometers of the planet he was to blow any Klingon ship in the AO out of the sky.

Dead hulks floating in space.

The way the ships seemed to go blank...all the lights out...drifting on the tidal currents of inertia and gravity.

The tell-tale graveyard of space.

Some Sassanid demand of his DNA loved it, the warrior supremacy and a warning to foes. A warning to allies for that matter. Your friendship renders you recipient of this protection...do not squander it or take it lightly.

How dire the premise.

He never considered himself blood thirsty...he prayed for those he killed, those his ship killed every day and every night. In his mind all beings were children of He and subject to his mercy, but if they raised their hands against his people and their allies...

Coffee...he needed coffee. Coffee was the enemy of introspection and self doubt, coffee beguiled it away be being hair curling strong, cloyingly sweet, or toe-curling bad...either way there was no room for doubt, self-loathing, stinkin' thinkin', or dilly dallying when coffee came into play.

"Mister Gottlieb..." Nassir barked crisply, calling to the Yeoman.

"Sir?"

"Can we get a fresh pot going? Not the cheap crap either, you have my permission to tap into the 'strategic' reserve."

Gottlieb narrowed his eyes giving him a ubiquitously Yiddish look of quiet skepticism, "That's the admirals' coffee you're talking about, commander."

Nassir flashed him a mischievous grin, "I know."

"Aye aye, sir!" The yeoman replied fervently, crossing to the small alcove the contained the water dispensers and coffee maker.

* * *

><p>T'Pol sat on the couch facing the AMOLED view screen as the news conference continued. Solan's head was rested on her lap, his body curled and his chest slowly rising and falling as he napped in the warmth of the pool of sunlight coming in through the bay doors and into the sitting room. Her fingers, almost idly, ran through her son's hair as if driven by their own desires and whims divorced from Vulcan logic.<p>

MCS had just announced that _Tirpitz_ had been involved in a major strike against Romulan strategic interests. The response in the reporter gallery was mixed; some clearly saw the move as judicious, some going as far to suggest it was a move that should have been taken immediately after the attack on Vulcan. Others had been less positively disposed about the action, and while MCS seemed to be entertaining any and all questions posited, the gallery seemed to have run out of pertinent things to ask.

The question regarding the naming convention and, specifically the name of the first battleship, had produced silence.

"Why would you name an MCS warship after the infamous Nazi ship? What kind of statement does that make to our galactic neighbors?"

Captain Duluth had remained composed for the most part, but something about his tone took a very serious edge when he replied, a fact T'Pol found amusing. "First off, the original Tirpitz was crewed mostly by German patriots and nationalists, if you had bothered to read into the history of the kriegsmarine you would know that they tended to stay out of politics. Secondly, the U.S.S. Tirpitz was so named because it was built in the tradition of the heavy cruiser raider, on the basis of its first mission where it fulfilled exactly that role, it seems an appropriate name."

T'Pol arched her brow at the screen, his response had been made out of his clear agitation, that had been foolish on his part as it would later be exploited by that particular media outlet. It was amusing to witness how humans still clung to certain episodes in their history in order to have visceral reactions. Earth's second world war had been just over 210 years ago, nobody living was in any manner directly effected by the results of the conflict, yet they still clung to it as a source of mortal offense. This was humanity at its most illogical...their ability to circumscribe victim status where it was not applicable. The more affluent the society, the worse it got.

She had her own visceral reactions at moments like this...the desire to throttle those humans to death.

In her youth she had merely found them illogical, obnoxious, counter-productive. But now, with the prospect that the remainder of her life would be spent, largely, among them she felt a strong desire to purge their influence.

They were counter-intuitive, their incessant need for validation and their seemingly endless quest for offense lessened the species as a whole.

On some level, she was angry...

Yes, definitely anger...

They were sullying this world, besmirching the race of her husband, marginalizing half the genetic heritage of her child and children-to-be. It was flatly unacceptable.

Solan fidgeted, likely sensing her anger through the parent-child bond. He lifted his head and looked up at her with an indignant expression that seemed years beyond him.

"I did not mean to disturb your sleep, tal-kam."

Solan still looked irritated as he rolled to his hands and feet, climbing into his mother's lap, then resting his head against her collar settled back down. T'Pol closed her arms around him, gently stroking his hair as he settled back in to resume his nap, somehow seeming to know that the amount of contact with his mother could calm her further.

There were times she felt unable to grasp the idea that he was only fifteen months old now, situations like this when he would give her these pedantic, almost long-suffering looks. It was almost as if he was the vessel of a much older soul.

And then other times...

Yesterday he had decided their sehlat would look better with stripes similar to Earth's panthera tigris tigris and had appropriated his father's boot-black towards such ends. In fairness he had done a surprisingly close approximation as the sehlat patiently allowed his infant charge to perform his displaced-well-meaning mischief. The sehlat...and they still had to come up with some sort of name for him...had actually seemed to be enjoying participating in the totally unexpected side-swipe of youthful misbehavior.

He sat with his head raised, paws together, letting out a good-natured huffing yowl as she froze dead in her tracks at the sight of what was occuring.

The million things that went through her mind simultaneously seemed to pass by as one single overwhelming thought dominated everything; how had he managed to do this without getting a speck of boot black on the carpet...?

He giggled in his sleep, her own thoughts about the event likely triggering a memory of the episode in his mind and how proud and excited he had been over it all.

The sound...it was indescribable...

In her ears it was like hearing the universe open up, all of its secrets laid bare.

For a brief moment she was eternity, everything, omnipresent, omniscient...

For a human they would say they were touching the face of God.

Who was Surak? If she were human should would undoubtedly be thinking 'screw that guy'.

What did he know of this perfection? This bliss?

She cradled Solan's tiny head, leaning her own head in to softly place her lips on his soft wheat colored hair. So illogical, so un-Vulcan, but she had no desire to be Vulcan when it came to these moments. No, she was certain that this had to be as Vulcan as it was human, to cherish your offspring was not only logical, it was...it had to be...the very foundation of life itself.

Among insects, mothers were known to give their very lives for their offspring...lovingly allow their own offspring to devour them so that they may be nourished. This could not be instinct, could not be part of the natural order, it could _only_ be love. So as they allowed their bodies be consumed she was allowing her katra to be feasted upon by her child, and she willingly...happily...would allow him to do so. For each spiritual bite, each morsel she felt given over to this her first born, she felt it replaced five fold.

The perfection could be solidified if only her mate were-

Oh...

That's right...

She had agreed to help Admiral Black convince Trip to not resign his commission. It would likely be at least another five years before he would be able to resume the quiet life he had initially planned for them.

Was it selfish of her to separate him from his family, to surreptitiously work to keep him involved with MCS? Certainly it was logical...his talents would be squandered in civilian life, it would be inexcusable for his capacity as engineer, warrior, and officer to not be utilized to their fullest capacity. In a way, his desire for a quiet life was actually horribly selfish when one considered his capacity to give back to his people.

There would be a consequence to it all though, a price she would have to pay.

She could accept that fact.

One day he would learn her part in him being co-opted by MCS.

One day all the pain of that pseudo-betrayal and the moral agony his role as fighter brought to him would have to be soothed.

She would have to be the one to deal with the recrimination, pay the price for her part in the quiet little treason against their family. Something in her wanted his anger, his frustration, he confusion and dejection. She wanted to feel the vulnerability in him, to feel the strength of conviction and discipline fail him and leave him the same way she had been left by the Trellium D years before. She wanted to hold him while he broke down, caress him soothingly while he wept, kiss him gently as he clung to her...afraid, confused, agonizing over things he could not reconcile. Her logic, her strength, her discipline would stand and become the pillar on which the relationship remained aloft.

There was something almost perverse to the desire until it struck her that it was not a self-ingratiating desire...

How shocking...almost inconceivable.

She didn't _want_ Trip to fall apart because it would strengthen her...she simply believed that he deserved to, should be allowed to, needed too. He had been strong for so long it seemed almost just that he be allowed to be weak, if only for a while. Further more, it was almost a certainty that he needed to be able to fall apart.

The sudden pang of longing was overwhelming, but she shoved it down, crumpled it up and hid it away before it could reach her child. He already woke some nights weeping, wanting his father, wanting to feel the reassuring hands of his father to lift him up, hold him close, the unquestionable powerful safety he could only experience from the quiet and subdued outwardly directed protective violence of what, to a child, had to be an almost deific father. She remembered something...threads of memories, specks of sensations, perceptions that existed almost as dreams of her own father, lifting her up, carrying her in powerful and sure arms. It was almost as if fragments of her early child were dangled before her eyes like tiny prisms, momentarily catching light to make you aware of their presence then disappearing again.

When Trip returned from this cruise she would have to make sure he could spend every moment possible with their son, it was only fair that both of them have that time together. Besides...he would be all hers come night fall.

* * *

><p>Valek arched a brow, frowning at the Andorian in front of him, arms crossed for any of a multitude of reasons; crossed arms helped protect his chest, it presented a more belligerent posture, it showed dissatisfaction...it was an excellent all purpose gesture. Of course in this situation much of it was feigned, playing the part that was expected. In point of fact he considered her very pretty.<p>

"I do not understand what you are trying to tell me." He said again.

She pointed over towards where Surat sat surrounded by his informal security detail and spoke once again in what was likely her native tongue.

"She wants you to inform your boss that he needs to report to the administration building."

Valek looked up to the tower where Corporal Barnes stood overwatch. The harsh seeming human had remained effectively aloof since his transfer to the prison camp, but he was fair and while most of the Romulans felt a subtle threat of violence from him as a veteran of Shi'kahr who had likely killed more than a few of their number during the fighting on Vulcan, he never was arbitrary or cruel.

Oh...and he also spoke near perfect Romulan.

"You'd think they would have a universal translator." Valek groused, hoping it didn't provoke the Corporal's ire but feeling the need to voice his protest.

"Yeah...you'd think..." Barnes declared, hands resting on the stock and receiver of the M-430 slung around his neck. He was silent a few moments then spoke up again, "You planning on getting a move on or what?"

Valek nodded, he had no intention of testing the patience or forbearance of the Marine, "I will go notify him."

Up to now they had been spared much of the routine cycle of interrogation used to ferret out Tal Shiar agents hiding among the troops taken prisoner, it had been a mercy as the procedures, as he had heard about them, tended towards the extreme. If Surat was about to face that kind of interrogation there was little he could do to help his commanding officer, but at the very least Surat had a sort of frankness of personality and character that tended to force people to take what he said at face value.

It didn't take him nearly as long to cross the field as he would have liked it to, having to go inform the Commander of the order was not something he relished and at least part of him wondered why the Andorians had not simply assembled a group of guards to come take him directly. Part of him suspected it had something to do with the attempt that had been made on Surat a week before by some Tal Shiar plants. It was believed that Surat's cohort enjoyed the level of privilege and impunity from the harassment of guards they did because of collaboration and not the more obvious element; good behavior.

The attempt had been stymied by Uhlans D'Kor and Sirrik who promptly intercepted and dispatched the would-be assassin before he could make his attack. Interrogation of the attacking prisoner by the staff of the prison had shown that the Romulan in question was, in face, Tal Shiar. One of the mess hall workers had revealed the fact to D'Varr who, still, seemed to be the only one of their number with an adequate grasp of the human tongue.

There was a chill in the breeze today, the slow current occasionally gusting in the way he remembered the winter storms rolling in from off the sea doing. If only there had been that hint of brine he could, for a moment, close his eyes and be back home. The subtle melancholy, like an old blanket, familiar and somehow comfortable despite tattered edges and holes, drew over him once again. He froze in his tracks, overwhelmed by the gravity of it all. There had been no word of contact from the Empire on their behalf, no concessions made, and news that the humans had been leading expeditionary strikes in their territory had caused initial alarm on the part of the prisoners.

The rumors had swirled around the camp that the humans were intent on eliminating their race entirely, or annexing the empire in its entirety. Certain leaders of the prisoner population had then been briefed by the joint administrative board, a human officer, a Vulcan bureaucrat, and some petty Andorian government functionary. They had assured them that the punitive raids were the result of continued Romulan belligerence along the border of their territory and no plan was being developed to annex Romulus, any Romulan territorial holdings, or begin a campaign of genocide.

Surat had accepted it without question, a fact that had initially sparked protest even from within the ranks of the cohort but were quickly silenced when he brought up a single immutable and pertinent point; have they lied to us yet? No...as near as could be told they had not, the humans seemed particularly scrupulous in that regard, even going as far as to provide the unvarnished truth when it could conceivably make their jobs more complicated.

"Valek?"

He didn't even realize he had been standing there longer than a second when he saw his commanding officer standing in front of him.

"Are you alright?"

He gave his head a single firm shake, "Yes, sir, was just lost in thought for a moment. The guards said you are to report to main administration."

"Did they say for what reason?" Surat furrowed his brows.

"Do they ever?"

The commander nodded, "Point taken."

* * *

><p>"So, captain, why do you prefer the AFG to the VFG, sir?"<p>

Tucker looked up from the PADD containing the situation report from Al-Sistani and right into the inquisitive face of Lance Corporal Peterson. He was a kid...well as much of a kid as you could be after combat diver training, zero G warfare school, jump school, SERE, ranger, and a whole list of other training cadres and special warfare centers someone like him had to go though to make the cut to be MARSOC.

"I dunno, always just felt more natural to me." He offered by way of explanation, it was a lot easier than, _Christ, I dunno kid, that's just they way I like it, I'm just some swabbie, why are you askin' me this crap?_

"Did you always use an AFG?"

"Didn't have time to grab one in forty seven."

Oh wait, that's what this was...Goddam hero worship.

How did you tell a kid like this that he was barking up the wrong tree?

"And before you ask I wasn't strappin' anything much bigger'n a M twenty seven in the expanse."

"Aye, sir." The lance corporal nodded. "Do most naval personnel prefer the angled fore grip?"

Trip lowered the PADD, "Honestly, I don't have the first idea...last time I ran into any swabbies who had the first clue what t'do with an M seven was at MARSOC trainin' in forty seven just before the hammer dropped."

The lance corporal nodded again, "Just one more thing, sir."

Trip arched his brows, "What would that be Corporal?"

"Sir, major Musashibo wanted me to life you about forgetting your son's birthday."

Tucker grimaced, "Yeah, I didn't actually forget about it..."

Trip had woken up the morning of Solan's first birthday and had considered breaking every operational dictum he knew in order to send a message. Something, anything to let his son know he was thinking about him, how badly he missed him and wanted to be there with him and his momma. In point of fact they were supposed to already be on their way back to Earth now. Six months had come and gone and in accordance with the original plan of procedure for the cruise they were supposed to be back at LaGrange two now.

Trip stood up, he had actually managed to send a message through standard channels a day ago, which meant it would likely still take a week for it to reach Earth, but more importantly...

"I think you misunderstood the major's imperative, lance corporal. What he actually meant was, he wanted you to get lifed for tryin' to life me."

Staff Sergeant Glass and Gunnery Sergeant Walthour could smell the blood in the water and sprung to their feet, coming up on either side of the Lance Corporal. They were already bellowing at him, screaming like frenzied drill instructors running him through a battery of physically strenuous exercises as part of the huge practical joke that was the faux break-off session. Trip was just about to return to his seat when Gunney Walthour stepped up, so far into his face that Trip felt momentary concern that the shorter Marine would go up his nose.

"What kind of grab ass is this Tucker? You do not forget a birthday, you understand me? Get on that deck!" He howled.

Trip barely suppressed the grin, he knew what this was, had seen it a million times before, this part was to play along like some boot getting a foot broken off in his ass. He immediately dropped to the floor, beginning to push out a series of quick, poorly preformed pushups, "Sir, aye, sir!"

"Push it out! Get your face in the dirt!"

"Sir, aye, sir!"

"You ain't making love to the deck, get up in that like you did your best friend's sister!"

Sergeants Gordon and Li and Staff Sergeant Madsen marched over as well, each taking up their part in the Super-Lifer Games, each clearly bucking for the gold and title of most obnoxious first-shirt candidate. This was a game, a game in two parts; it was the only acceptable way that enlisted and non-coms could give an officer a hard time without the potential of getting NJPed, providing the officer elected to participate in the joke at his expense. Further, it helped to help break in junior enlisted who often became rapidly too big for their britches upon leaving boot.

"For the love of Jesus...shut the fuck up, there are decent people trying to sleep over here." Lieutenant Pritchard growled from his cot.

The wind, as it were, quickly and unceremoniously left everyone's sails. Among the marines, the young lieutenant was widely regarded as the hardest, meanest, bastard in the battalion. Not even Major Musashibo was looked at with as much awed admiration and a fair measure of fear as first lieutenant Nathan W. Pritchard.

Of course, Trip, himself, occupied his own unique niche when it came to ship lore and the pecking order of who constituted the most bad ass person or persons on the ship. He had managed the trifecta; the forty seven war, the Xindi, and now Vulcan and the Romulan War. Between that and the half dozen badges and services devices that were part of his NWU, he was treated, at times, as part God, part father confessor, part warrior prophet, and part high school sports hero. The awe those who served under him experienced towards him was tempered by a sort of easy accessibility that didn't intimidate or scare away like it did with Musashibo or Pritchard.

"Alright, gentlemen, lets break it up before the lieutenant decides the Klingons are the least of our worries." Trip quipped sardonically.

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir." Pritchard replied with an appropriate measure of respect.

Trip stood, looking back over at his own cot and the PADD laying there-on. He should write another letter, send it to his son, give him something to look at in years to come and remember about his old man who wasn't there when he was little. It pained him a little to even consider the separation, the fact he hadn't been there to watch his son turn one year old. As soon as they got back he was going to put in his resignation...he'd finish out the three month refit and repair cycle but after that, he was done...totally done.

He could likely land a job as one of the General Dynamics lab jockeys at Canaveral and spend the next twenty years of his life doing that without ever having to be separated, for more than a few days, from T'Pol and Solan. A yawn overtook him, and he suddenly realized precisely how tired he really was, how drained. The adrenaline, the modified-MAOA reactions, all of those things had done much to help allay the feelings of exhaustion, but now it was finally here to collect.

He felt his eyelids starting to drift shut, bobbing back upwards only to fight against some sudden impossible gravity that wanted to pull them down. As they once again popped open just to being the slow slide to cover his eyes again he caught a glimpse of a figure...not one of the marines, not a Kriosian, little more than a silhouette standing near a colonnade. It looked like it was clad in civilian clothes, and the bearing bespoke an almost imperious nature. For whatever reason, Trip couldn't look away, and when it began to speak... "Captain Charles Tucker-"

"Captain! Sir!"

Trip's eyes shot open, turning to see the flushed face of Corporal Sears, "Sir! Tirpitz is on the horn...they just fired on a Klingon ship."

Trip looked quickly to the colonnade...nothing was there, it had to have just been his brain playing tricks on him, more importantly, there was now a shooting situation with the Klinks and that could only mean one thing.

"Sonuvabitch...get me the Princess and her ministers right now, Corporal."

* * *

><p><strong>[! Author's Note !]<strong>

**Wow, this story is one year old already...and we're right about smack dab in the middle of this story now based on my current projection for where I'll be taking it. But who knows, I might need at least another fifty chapters to get where I want to go with this. Within the next few chapters you'll start to understand why I call this the first of three "overlapping" stories.**

**Unfortunately, the time between chapters is about to increase because of certain business and personal issues, as well as the Cassandra's Dilemma Book 2's writing cycle about to kick into high(er) gear again.**


	38. Chapter 38

"What the hell happened up there?" Tucker griped into the handset as a charging handle was work on an assault rifle behind him.

"It wasn't the cruisers, one of their raider type craft came in cloaked, dropped the field and beamed in personnel before we could close to interdict." Nassir's voice streamed back through.

"Had we even detected that one?"

"No sir, likely made it in system cloaked already, we weren't even looking for cloaked craft so it slipped right past us until it was within passive resonance range."

"Any idea how many it beamed in?" Trip asked, pulling the charging handle on his M-7 back a fraction to make sure the weapon was in battery.

"More than ten, less than a hundred...?" The reply was lilting, perhaps a little embarrassed, with an almost sardonic current running through it.

"Gee...thanks..."

"It's in imprecise art, Skipper...want me to get the major to detail another platoon for you?"

Trip did a quick hand count of his available magazines and checked to make sure his grenades were properly secured. "What're the cruisers doin'?"

"Stand off range, power to shields and weapon systems."

"Did'ya at least get a track on the assets they beamed in?"

"That hurts, sir." Al-Sistani quipped back over the ULF.

Tucker almost wanted to remind the commander the degree to which the situation was tactically significant. But then again, this was Commander Nassir Al-Sistani, probably the best attack boat Skipper that had come out of MCS in the last ten years.

"We placed their beam-in location at grid reference niner five one three three zero elevation zero eight meters." Nassir answered before Trip could formulate a diplomatic way to chide his XO.

"That's-"

"Aye, sir, one point zero five klicks east north east of your position."

Tucker spun immediately on his heel to see Corporal Sears, Dunn, and Paz approaching with Kaitaama and four of her ministers and a troop of bodyguards in tow. There was also a man with her that he didn't recognize, about her age with a confident bearing and clothing befitting one of high station. Of course...this had to be the first...whatever he was...her husband.

"I would love it if you could give me a head count on hostile movers." Tucker said back into the ULF hand piece.

"Negative visual, you have low and mid altitude cloud cover." Nassir replied again.

Trip paused, chewing on his lip, what should he do now? They could all beam out right now and be done with it, but that meant that they had symbolically abandoned the planet and its people. Besides, grabbing the Queen and...King-thingy...and a few ministers was hardly enough to ensure consistency of the government. No, they would have to win this the hard way if they wanted to keep the Klinks' grubby fingers off the planet.

"Get on the p-keck and get our sitrep to Sanderson and request permission to seek reinforcement from Task Group: Deguello. A.G. has gotta have at least a few boats he can kick over."

"Aye sir, maintain current demarcation and AO?"

"If plausible," Tucker replied with a steely edge to his voice, "keep us apprised of your situation. We are at task group redcon one, combat effective, how copy?"

"Solid copy, skipper, under command authority I am tapping the strategic event reserves for the one oh fives, sir."

Trip nodded, more to himself than to his XO who had no way of seeing it. If things weren't as they were on the planet he would have cut Nassir free to go chase down and run off the Klingon Cruisers. Part of him wanted at least a platoon with him, but he had to keep reminding himself that these Marines were the best of the best, not like the line doggies he had fought with during the 47 war...and even they had been more than adequate to defeat Klink infantry. These MARSOC didn't consider anything less than five to one odds a challenge, not that they usually wanted a challenge. The fact that a section could effectively dismantle an enemy platoon in a matter of minutes was why they were what they were. They were brass knuckles in a fist fight, a gun in a fencing match...they weren't here to fight fair, they were here to win.

"Roger that, Alamo, out."

Besides, it would be easier for them to move without a bunch of Marines to draw attention. Three sections, twenty one Marines...it had been more than he had when he landed on Vulcan and while he had never been on any operations with these boys, he was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were as good as Hayes' men. In a moment of grim retrospection he had to consider that if Wayne Shelby had MARSOC at his disposal on Vulcan they likely wouldn't have been forced to leave a section behind as a blocking force during the walk-out of the Vulcan High Command.

That wasn't going to happen on his watch...

The Romulans had been an unknown quantity; unknown tactics, unknown capabilities, and of course they had the Marines massively outnumbered at the time. When it came to the Klingons there had been entire books written on the subject, hour upon hour of course work devoted to countering extant warrior fiefdom threats in an extra-stellar strategic setting. Just about everyone in MARSOC with more than two stripes had been involved in the 47 war and anyone who hadn't had been properly drilled on what to expect. The only thing the Klinks really had to recommended them as a respectable threat was a willingness to attack without reason and with pronounced ferocity. This was the expectation, this is what they trained for, and it was a simple task because for all their bluster and bravado, they couldn't hold a candle to augmentees when it came to pure ferocity.

The scars on Trip's back and side began to ache sympathetically, the worst injuries he had ever received in the line of duty and badges of honor in their own right. The fact that he had them meant he had been the one survived...the ultimate in "you should see the other guy." His knuckles felt a bit of a twinge of their own; the other guy...Trip had smashed his face, quite literally, back into his brain pan. Dumbest thing that Klink had ever done was not aim for his neck when he had the chance.

And the dumbest thing these particular Klinks had ever done was invade a planet with an MCS battleship in orbit. He wasn't particularly sure why he seemed to hate the Klingons so much more, hate didn't even fit in the vocabulary when he thought about the Romulans...maybe it was because they were so much like Vulcans, so much like T'Pol. God...anything to be with her again and away from this kind of crap detail.

_I'm a Goddamn engineer...what the hell am I doing here?_

The whole idea had been to start a life, a family, to stop being a self-guided piece of ordnance or machine operator, to be a person, husband, father, next-door fucking neighbor, PTA member, gold club membership holder...whatever it may be, just anything that wasn't this.

"Captain Tucker..."

Trip turned to see Kaitaama and her must-be husband standing close by, the man had addressed him.

"Yes, yer majesty?" He held to protocol as best he could, trying to reconcile the strange twinge of territoriality he was feeling.

"What is your plan of action?"

"We'll try'n round up as much of your government as we can find then get y'all up to the Tirpitz. If we can ensure continuity of your government it'll be a helluva lot easier to maintain' your national sovereignty while we kick the Klingons out."

"How long will that take?" He inquired, his expression showing more than just a hint of misgiving.

Trip let a bit of a cruel smirk on his face, he may not particular like what he was about to say, but damn...if it wasn't the truth, "Depends on how many Klinks're in orbit...anything less'n three thousand and my Marines'll finish 'em off if my XO doesn't kill'em all before they can make planet fall."

For the first time Trip took the man into stock, he was easily about four inches shorter and his face and build seemed to indicate he had led a soft life up to this point. He was about one shade lighter in terms of skin tone than Kaitaama and the premature graying at his temples gave him a sort of distinguished air...he looked the part of royalty. Trip couldn't help but reflect on the differences; this was a man who could tell you which fork was which at a formal setting, he would know art, culture, protocol. And here Trip was, the barely civilized Florida boy in combat utility uniform armed to the teeth, on the planet for the sole purpose of killing the enemy.

Still, he couldn't help but feel the creeping sensation of jealousy, resentment and he couldn't put his finger on why. He never really felt any strong emotional connection with Kaitaama...she was a fling, no more, no less. He found her attractive, exotic, interesting...the sex was pretty awful, she clearly had no idea what she wanted or needed, it left all the guess work to him, but by the same measure he didn't want her to be in a bad relationship. The fact that this guy was sleeping around while she had been holding out, unrequited, for her dashing Star Fleet engineer...

No...

It wasn't just wrong, it was fucked up _and_ wrong.

But then again, it was possible he never asked for any of this either. What if he loved someone else and was just as stuck, just as forced into this relationship as she was?

What if all he had ever wanted was to be married to someone he loved?

What did you do when your status, your culture forced you to be with someone else?

What did one do when there was never any love there to begin with?

At least on Vulcan one or the other could have declared a Kal'i'fee. In many ways, Trip had been blessed...the woman he loved, suspected he _always_ had loved had been within his grasp, events transpired in such a way that he was able to secure her when she reciprocated that love in her own kind of understated way. Neither of the two Kriosian nobles could say the same, so it was the torture of knowing that they could never truly be with the ones they did love while having to settle for one another. Maybe, if they were lucky, he would manage to at least find friendship in one another, maybe a different kind of affection that would allow them to support one another.

"I had hoped that wouldn't be necessary, Captain Tucker." He answered with more than a hint of distaste apparent in his expression.

Trip shrugged, "It's kinda a raw deal no matter how you look at it, sir. I dunno how y'all's history has unfolded with the Klingons thus far, but based on what we've seen, just about the only way t'handle 'em is matchin' violence for violence, usually preemptively."

"Unfortunate."

Trip's mouth drew into a wan line, his eyebrows arched matter-of-factly, "Yeah, we've been gettin' a lot of that the last ten years, sir."

1LT Pritchard stepped over, his expression predictably grim, "What is our course of action, sir?"

Tucker turned to make eye contact with Kaitaama then back to her husband, "With your permission, your majesties, we'd like t'start locatin' as many of your higher rankin' officials in the immediate area as possible so we can move y'all to a secure location for extraction."

"How will we move such a large contingent?" The Kriosian queen inquired, slightly baffled by the proposed course of action.

"On foot." Trip replied. flatly, matter-of-factly, this was a foregone conclusion.

Kaitaama gawked at him, "We're walking?"

He couldn't help himself, "That's usually what 'on foot' means."

"Trip!" She let it slip, invoking a look of quiet consternation from her spouse.

"Based on what we figured out earlier today, there are like...twelve principals in the immediate area, all within one mile distance of the palace, we'll be lookin' at about seven miles total travel, there are probably as many as a'hundred Klingons in the immediate area, bein' mobile will make trackin' us complicated for 'em."

"Contact forward!" Lance Corporal Peterson howled.

"Pritchard, take point, Peterson, Gordon, suppressive, buy us a few minutes then beat feet, copy?" Trip shouted back, then turned to the Kriosians, "We gotta move now."

Sergeant Gordon wasted no time bringing his M-430 to bear on the advancing Klingon section, advancing, crouched, down the column lined walk way, their disruptors already drawn. The chattering bray of the machine gun echoed within the marble halls, reverberating then echoing out into the gardens and courtyards to alert the night that a fire fight was occurring.

The eight Klingons dove for cover, it wasn't terribly likely that they had been part of the 47 war, but the sound that the LMG produced seemed to brook little in the way of curiosity. The sound was as aggressive as the weapon's performance profile. The heavy weight 8.6mm bullets skipped off the marble, kicking up small amounts of debris as they struck the hard surface and began to shatter. The two Marines backed away slowly, putting more distance between themselves and the Klingon squad as Gordon squeezed off short bursts and Peterson covered the sector with the integrally suppressed M-7 mod 2.

For every ten feet the two Marines backed up, the Klingons quickly slipped around the columns to move forward. Perhaps there was a forty seven vet among them, as they seemed intent on avoiding presenting themselves to the potential fire from the two Marines.

"Fall back, standard cover drill, P..." Gordon declared between discreet bursts from the 430.

"Roger that." Peterson turned and dashed thirty feet down the walkway before taking up position next to a column. It was just the thing the Klingons had been waiting for, and, consequently, Sergeant Gordon as well. He knew better than the Klingons themselves what they would do, and as if on cue one of the younger Klingon warriors stepped into the open to take advantage of the momentary shift of Marine personnel. Gordon put the sights right at the Klinks knee and squeeze, a full break trigger depression and return, six rounds total, right on target, allowing the muzzle to climb without resistance.

The first of the 220 grain projectiles struck the advancing warrior in the right thigh about seven inches above the knee.

The second struck at the left inner hip joint.

The third hit him, again, on the right side, in the lower abdominal region.

The fourth struck in the upper gastric, just below the diaphragm.

Fifth round went into his upper left chest cavity, clearly hitting the lung and visibly exited through his back just above the scapula.

The sixth and final struck him in the face just above the brow, right in the middle of the forehead.

He was limp before he'd even finished falling. When he hit the ground there was a sickening slap of his head striking the marble and the blood began to run.

"Shit!" Peterson bellowed as he sent a pair of the lighter weight assault rifle bullets down the hall to suppress any further rushes, "You fucked him up, sar'ent!"

It took a moment for the remaining Klingons to realize what had happened to their comrade until that odd-colored blood of theirs began to run unchecked across the marble tiles and into the adjacent flower beds. Upon realization that their fellow warrior was dead they began letting out incoherent howls of alarm or rage, it was impossible for Gordon to tell.

"Willie Pete." Gordon shouted.

"Yut!" Peterson pulled the grenade from his LBE, jerking the pin free with his thumb then tossing the device down the walkway where it emitted a pop and a loud crackling hiss as the thick white smoke began to pour out of it.

Gordon didn't waste a moment, turning and running back to where Peterson still had his carbine up to cover the sector. Behind them the Klingons began barking orders at once another and shouting, that was more than enough for the Marines who both began charging down the corridor turning only for a moment to lay shots into the Klingons' sector when they cleared the smoke.

* * *

><p>Suvak could feel the fact that the fever was abating, in less than a day he would be able to leave the monastery and resume his duties, putting this part of his life behind him for another seven years. It wasn't that he hated sex, didn't enjoy engaging in it, he just hated not being in control of his sex drive, it was supposed to be a choice not a sickness. Still...he had to admit she was very proficient, as skilled, if not more so, than any human woman he had been with, arguably better than the Deltan who had treated his first fever.<p>

He thrust forward frantically, his breathing growing labored as he felt completion approaching, a series of groans leaving him as with one final push wave of building need broke, the sudden agony, the matching sensation of unvarnished pleasure, and the thundering sense of relief. Beneath him V'Rel rolled her head back, letting out her own sigh of satisfaction.

"You are exceedingly adept at this, I believe our people would be better served if you shifted your focus to the Elmuvak-Shaukaush." She said as he allowed the strength to leave his arms and legs.

"My particular area of proficiency lies elsewhere." He stated between heaving breaths.

"And that would be...?"

"Classified." He managed every ounce of his dignity for that single word.

V'Rel said nothing further, finding the moment of physical closeness agreeable. His arms were still wrapped around her, and hers around him. In many ways he mated like he was Elmuvak-Shaukaush, but with more passion and conviction. It was quite uncommon for a Vulcan male.

"Is your skill in the sexual arts a natural talent or have you had experience in the area?" V'Rel asked matter-of-factly.

"That is marginally insulting." Suvak answered with a hint of amusement in his voice.

"I do not understand."

Suvak rolled away, coming to rest on his back, "It is a human affectation."

"So you have spent a great deal of time among humans?" V'Rel sat up, to look down at her current partner.

Suvak gave her a visual once over, again appreciating, in an understated way, how pleasing she was physically. She seemed to sense his admiration and blushed just a little, the olive shade accentuating her skin. "That is where the experience comes from."

"You have mated with human females?"

"No...I had recreational sexual congress, there was no more an attempt at mating that was made between you and I."

V'Rel arched a brow, "Is that a habit of yours?"

"Not since returning to Vulcan."

"You have answers for everything." She quipped.

"It goes with the job." He fired back, part of him wondering if she would be adverse to cuddling as he found the practice satisfying.

V'Rel stared off at the wall for a moment, her expression contemplative. "A number of years ago we had a Vulcan woman arrive here whom we believed had attempted to mate with a human."

"T'Nal?" Suvak sat up, leaning on an elbow.

"That was not her name." V'Rel answered, folding her legs into the lotus position but making no move to rise and clothe herself.

"How many years ago was this?"

"Approximately twenty now...maybe twenty one." She squinted a moment, trying to recollect more precisely, "Yes, just shy of twenty one."

"What leads you believe that she attempted to mate with a human?" He arched a curious brow.

"She kept talking about blue eyes."

Suvak grunted, something that almost approximated a chuckle in his mind, "My cousin is mated to a human...he has blue eyes."

V'Rel straightened at the revelation, "I have never heard of anything of the sort."

He furrowed his brow, "Surely the news even reached this monastery. There was something of a scandal involving it all."

V'Rel arched her brows in reply, tilting her head slightly, "We pay little heed to the outside world, there is more than enough to keep us suitably distracted here."

"He was responsible for ensuring that the High Command was able to escape and then was in command of the garrison forces that held the Romulans at Shi'kahr until reinforcements from Earth could arrive."

V'Rel arched an amused brow, "Is that embellishment?"

Suvak sat up, looking right back in her eye, "No...I was there..."

"While my knowledge of humans is limited, nothing you have said seems particularly singular in that regard, they do seem to be a martial people." She spoke evenly, calculating her words.

"Not all of them, a majority of their people are not warlike at all, they just don't tend to travel to Vulcan."

She considered the words, there was some appreciable logic there. Majority of the trade between Vulcan and Earth did not require humans to ever set foot on their world, similarly, their shorter relative lifespan meant it was much more convenient for Vulcan scientists and scholars to travel to Earth. "It is strange then that she would choose to mate with a member of their military."

"They had a child together."

V'Rel couldn't hide her surprise at this revelation, it was indeed unheard of. "They were able to produce a child together?"

Suvak nodded, "Yep..." He took some relish in using the human term, it's like was not at all part of the Golic tongue, there was even a fair chance she would not be able to understand the word.

"May I ask your cousin's name?"

"Certainly..." Suvak paused, allowing himself one last coup while his emotional reserves were still near their minimum and grinned, "But I am not sure I can tell you."

* * *

><p>Duras looked over to Colonel Khorr in barely varnished disgust. The house of Toral had offered to provide support for this venture if, and only if, a diplomatic accord could be reached with Krios. Krios would better serve the empire as a willing addition than a planet bullied into submission then stripped of wealth. Duras didn't understand where this sudden and inexplicable drive to expand the empire was coming from. Their borders had been mostly stagnant for decades, the number of great houses was slowly diminishing, not increasing. Territory and administrative districts were slowly but surely being expanded as the remaining houses gobbled up the remains of the fallen and the borders slowly crept ever outward.<p>

More than anything, they did _not_ need another war with the humans. Some had just assumed that their victory seven years prior had been the result of failed strategic policy on the part of the invading Klingon force and dumb luck on the part of the humans. Duras knew better. He had thrown his lot in with the forces attacking the human colonies over his father's protestations. The fact he had made it out alive had cured him of adventurism when it came to the humans. The fate of the Romulans had just further reinforced it; the humans had crushed their invasion force then started a campaign that had left their war capacity completely gutted. Duras had insisted that now was the time for them to carve out a portion of the Romulan empire, exploiting the existing infrastructure and fortifying against potential counter-invasions by the weakened enemy.

When the human Warship had appeared in orbit, he had almost left, pulled his forces out and abandoned the world entirely. Now Khorr's blundering had put the first monarchs and their ministers on the run, escorted by human soldiers. One of Khorr's men had identified them on the basis of their equipment and the patch worn on their uniforms as the humans' elite war fighters.

Why had the fool chosen to abandon diplomacy? They could have milked concessions from the Kriosian monarchy...left them independent but garnered favored trade status, the ability to traverse their space, perhaps even a garrison of Imperial warriors.

But all that was rapidly disappearing as a chance...Khorr's fast raider had managed to beam down two thirds of its compliment of one hundred and eighty warriors before it had been blown to pieces along with the warriors that had remained aboard by the human warship in orbit. Duras' two cruisers were now in jeopardy...if the human warship attacked, all scans seemed to indicate that it could destroy or cripple all of the cruisers before sufficient enough system failures could repulse it. If that event occurred, he swore to himself that he would kill Khorr personally.

* * *

><p><strong>[!-Author's Note-!]<strong>

**Frailty, thy name is writer's block...and its pretty much hitting me across all fronts at once. This was supposed to be the point where I'd have published another TCD2 chapter, but it's one of those "how do I transition" moments so I just went ahead and ran with this. Know where I want to go, just don't know how to get there...bear with me.**


	39. Chapter 39

The large one was at it again...talking to others like her, but different. They smelled hotter, sweeter than she, she was like the cub while these two other large ones smelled more like the alpha male, the pack master. He had been absent far too long… The cub sometimes smelled a bit like them too, the hot sweet smell occasionally spiking over that earthy tang of the den mother and cub's usual smell.

The cub...

Why would he not keep his fur preened?

Dutifully he began licking, trying to ensure that the mob of fur on the cub's head was cleaned and properly arranged. The fact that he wouldn't do it himself was becoming problematic...a cub should know how to do this by his age.

He was small though...a cub his age should have been at least half again as big as he was now. He clearly wasn't getting enough meat, the den mother insisted on feeding him a large portion of plants and roots as part of cub's diet. It was not fitting, he needed meat to get bigger, stronger. He resolved to set aside a portion of his daily food so that the cub could ingest more flesh and grow bigger and stronger.

The cub's small, dry paws began running through the fur on his neck, in effect preening the hard to reach area. When the cub pawed at him it was comforting, the cub knew how to make him relax and the low rumble coming from his throat now was as much in anticipation of how good it would feel as it was appreciation for the cubs assistance with that hard to reach part of his body.

Such a strange pack; the den mother was a different creature from the pack master, their cub was a little of both, he acted like the pack master, was closer to the pack master, looked more like the pack master, but he smelled and tasted like the den mother.

None of that was important though...he needed to be groomed.

The cub started making the chirping sound again, the same sound he made when he seemed to be feeling boisterous. This caught the den mother's attention and she looked down, she made a single sound, the same firm sound that he knew meant she was not pleased.

Body language...her inability to utilize it was maddening. The den mother clearly didn't have the first understanding of establishing the hierarchy; the cub ran roughshod over everything. Not that it was a problem...he could deal with attending to his preening as long as he still would indulged in bouts of chase and stalk.

He looked back at her; trying to summon his indignity, his disapproval. _It is your cub, female, attend to his preening yourself then! Better still, train him how to attend to it himself, I swallow enough of my own fur without adding his._

* * *

><p>In the broader scope of the continuity arc, this existence seemed one of the strangest. Until three days ago there were only seventeen potential variations on the schema. This arm of humanities development had been isolated and given a wide berth for good reason; it was dangerous...imminently dangerous. Evidence suggested that their intelligence community became aware of the Temporal Cold War and eight of the known faction some time in the twenty third century and began actively seeking operatives to purge. By the time they had reached the twenty fifth century this reality plane was displaying technology that made them an imminent threat to all of the Temporal factions. The fact that they were actively aware of the subtle manipulations of the Temporal Cold War meant they would, likely, move to interdict at some point with disastrous consequences for the reality model.<p>

It was the very fact that this variance plane existed that kept the war from ever going hot; in 2412 this universe's Strategic Readiness Detachment had eradicated the Na'kuhl entirely through a series of tactical assaults, executions, and assassinations. They had, in their own right, made themselves players in the cold war but with a distinct and unique objective: to be left alone.

Every existence schema started as a single point with the variations radiating outwards, some interlinking, some wandering far from their initial development shift. Charting the data resulted in what was called the "shatter graph" with variations radiating away from the central point like cracked glass. The shatter graph for Theta zero three one one had been obscured as confidential, the reason, she later found out, was because it was believed that the denizens of that particular corner of existence would take mortal offense to being monitored.

Tucker was, somehow, the key to all of what was occurring; the massive breaks in continuity began on Krios and the consequences of the outcome here would help determine what fate awaited existence. The potential ramifications of the events unfolding on the surface of the planet could bring about the deaths of billions or it could be an uneventful foot note in the development of this single plane of existence, the spill over, however, had the potential to upset the progression of the game of maneuver and proxy wars.

Tucker...somehow he was placed to make the biggest difference, she grit her teeth at the thought, this...man...she felt disgusted by him, loathed what she saw, despised the way he hoisted the rifle, pulling stock tight to his shoulder and depressing the trigger sent a pair of high density projectiles into a pursuing Klingon. Barbarian, savage, killer, blunt-instrument, fiend...he was also her seventeenth generation great grand father. Her mind wandered, remembering the day of the startling revelation; she and her mate's first born had demonstrated the traits for blond hair and blue eyes, unheard of in Shiric and Golic Vulcans. The initial genealogy track had found that sixteen generations prior their forebears had been siblings, it was deemed to be the movement of katra that had brought the family line back together in such a way, the family split in the late twenty second century and eight hundred thirty years later had come back together, their child was viewed as a blessing, almost a symbolic reincarnation of the children of T'Pol and Koss. But why then had the child exhibited the bizarre recessive trait that was virtually exclusive to humans?

A quick investigation had revealed the truth; the children of T'Pol were sired by Charles A. Tucker III. Both she and her mate had long dormant human blood that had revealed itself in their offspring. Given this fact she was selected as the point of contact for the Charles Tucker in this universe...the vagaries of which temporal plane had spawned her was considered to be of tertiary importance, if one thing was true of Tucker across all known and charted realities, it was that he cherished family and her status as his descendent could be used to leverage him if necessary.

This man, however, couldn't be anything like her forefather. The intellect was there, the easy personality, the sheepish demeanor quick with a joke, the adoration for a Vulcan female...that all was true, but no incarnation of Charles Tucker III she was aware of was capable of this level of casual brutality.

"Li, Glass, Madsen, screen forward, L T stick with the principles." Tucker ordered.

"Where are you going, sir?" The officer identified as first lieutenant Pritchard inquired.

"Me, Walthour and Paz are gonna go give 'em somethin' to think about."

The lieutenant nodded, his demeanor suggesting that he knew better than to argue with a veteran of Tucker's stripe. "Aye aye, sir. C'mon people, lets move."

"Just like forty seven, yut?" Walthour stated, unslinging his M-12A3 Mod 1 integrally suppressed rifle.

"Nope...we've got cover this time..." Tucker replied sardonically pulling the small tabs of electrical tape off the pin and spoon assembly on his fragmentation grenades.

Now was her chance, while there were the fewest possible residual contacts present. Even with technology that could alter time progression, most sentient beings were subtly aware of when time around them was manipulated, even if they were frozen during the split second of perception where it occurred. She took a breath, steeling herself as she triggered the chronometric stabilization device. In effect it slowed the Higgs process almost to a halt, effectively removing anything within a fixed radius from the progress of time. The effect was instantaneous, anything that occurred within the area occurred at a rate of three minutes of experienced time for one pico-second of actual time.

Herself and Tucker were the only ones that needed be isolated from the effect, then she could communicate the reason she had been sent.

"Captain Charles Tucker..."

His expression spoke volumes, he already sensed the alteration in effective time progression. Of course, these humans were all augmented, their nervous systems had superior capacity for perception the universe would feel "wrong" as the Higgs process slowed while his body was artificially accelerated to prevent the slowing of cognitive process.

"What the-"

"Do not be alarmed captain Tucker, I will return you to the normal progression of time once I have finished speaking to you." She answered evenly, her logic warring with her emotions over this strange convergence of events.

"What the-"

"Captain Tucker, I am not from the universe as you perceive it. Do you grasp the concept of multiple universes and time travel?"

"WHAT THE-"

"Captain Tucker!"

His anger was painted over ever inch of his face, being powerless like this had to be something new and startling for him. "Yes, I understand the prevailing theories."

"I will attempt to be brief." She remained in a shadow cast by a tree against the low wall around the house they were standing near, letting the dark obscure her face. Some compulsion drove her not to reveal herself, this man was not her forefather...or at least not as she understood it, yet there was a gnawing sensation of doubt that wanted his...what...approval?

"Are they bein' overrun?"

"What-" She was startled at the question.

"My men, the Kriosians...are they bein' overrun?"

"N-no."

"Then why didn't you just leave me a memo?"

Her jaw dropped involuntarily, just how flippant could he be. "That is an absurd contention, there is nothing to suggest you would have believed it."

"Lady, this whole existence thing is pretty damn big and pretty damn complex, it'd be kinda stupid to assume that we've already got the whole thing figured out."

It was a logical assertion, pragmatic, it acknowledged how relatively finite that all sentient beings were in the greater scheme of things, and how limited their understanding was, it was a respectable perspective. No.

No no no.

She did not _want_ to respect him, did not even want to respect his point of view.

He was the job, the task, the necessary evil.

"The current course of action your understanding of reality has taken-"

He cut her off, "Bad choice'a words."

"Excuse me?"

"My understandin' of reality could be very limited, impossibly broad, or just all-hands-on-sandwich crazy."

How to respond to that? "That is beside the point."

"No, it's not."

"_Excuse_ me?"

"Look, lady...you've apparently got some big time 'fate o'the universe' type crap you're about to lay on me...or at least as you understand it to be. Now, problem is, unless you have a very good psyche profile on me already cobbled together'n ready to go, you don't know me from Adam. I could be forks-in-the-eyes nuts for all you know and will use whatever you tell to justify becomin' the self appointed God Emperor of the known universe and just a general pain in everyone's ass."

"Dang-sahrafel Terrasu duhik nam-tor." She muttered to herself.

He narrowed his eyes, "Well then go find a Vulcan to trust with it then, if we humans are so unreliable why'd'ya come to me in the first place?"

Her jaw dropped again.

"Don't act so surprised, lady...plenty'a humans can speak Vulcan." He chuckled wryly, "But I guess you sort of gave the fact yer Vulcan away. You really suck at this, don't you?"

He could see through her pretense, so there was no use to attempting to maintain it, "I did not want this assignment."

"Alright..."

"But it is necessary. I will not attempt to pretend I find human company pleasing, I find your people boorish, the humans of this universe and you particularly more so." What an illogical confession to make. Something about him was profoundly disquieting.

"So whatever the issue it must effect a whole lot more'n just humans, right?"

He was not behaving like she expected him too, "That does not bother you? It does not challenge your preconceptions and offend your sensibilities that I am an unabashed xenophobe?"

He shrugged, "What can I say...I'm a sucker for candor."

"You are being condescending." She accused.

"Look, missy...I'm pretty sure you didn't just break every rule of matter behavior to ask me what I thought about you as a person. 'Sides, a Vulcan would only be interested in a single issue; whether or not I could be coerced to act along a prescribed pattern of behavior after this kind'a revelation, so shall we cut the bull and get to the meat of the matter?"

A lesson in logic from a human...how embarrassing. "Very well, there is a faction attempting to influence the events of this plane of existence."

"Yeah...you..."

"Other than me!"

He released the grip on his weapon, letting it hang from his sling as he crossed his arms, "Okay, slow down, take a deep breath, and start again from the beginning."

She did as she was bid, taking a deep breath, finding a mote of calm, it was a bit embarrassing to consider that he was taking this better than she was. He was supposed to be an irrational human, this was supposed to be a universe ruled by barbaric humans much like the Lambda two three eight universe. The marked difference was that Theta zero three one one was, technologically at least, far ahead of most of the other variances, the ethos was definitely martial, but there was no attempt on the part of MCS to conquer unlike Lambda two three eight's Terran Empire.

"There are currently multiple factions operating across the dimensional planes attempting to influence events for the purpose of their own gain and benefit." She declared slowly.

"Okay, I got that part, technically you're doin' the same thing, but go ahead."

"The current spikes in aggression by the Romulan Star Empire and this move by the Klingons are the result of those activities."

"I can kind of grasp what you're sayin' about the Romulans, but the Klinks have picked a fight with us before." He extended a hand, palm up, as if physically offering the point as he spoke.

"The pattern of aggression on the part of the Romulans and Klingons is fairly universal in all available reality schemas." She clarified.

"So what makes this different?"

"Timing. The Romulans were not supposed to attack for another three years, and first contact with the Klingons was not supposed to occur prior to 2150."

"That's where give'r'take comes into play." He said evenly. "A few years this way or that way isn't weird, it's just part of natural variance."

"The same is true of your plane of reality. Our records indicated that the Romulans were not due to attack until 2156 in your existence and the 2147 war with the Klingons was completely aberrant." She fired back.

He bit his lower lip, eyes narrowing, a scowl forming on his face, "Well, if you want to look at it from the perspective of strategic overview...neither situation really had any negative effect on our progression."

His point was valid; she was surprised he could make the connection so easily, "Which is precisely why we decided to investigate the series of events, we believed there might have been a faction agitating with the goal of human supremacy in mind."

"I'm sensin' a 'but' here."

"Very astute, Captain Tucker," She continued, "the faction seems to possess incomplete intelligence regarding your capacity and because of this, they have forced various indigenous factions into acting hastily and only improving your strategic and political standing."

"Or it's just a very elaborate scam..."

"We considered that," She answered back, not even considering how easy it was to be having this conversation, "however there are traces of this same faction acting with the purpose of upsetting or destroying human interests in other reality schema."

He reached upwards, pulling his helmet back to run a hand through his hair, blinking red rimmed eyes shut for a moment, "Okay...given the fact yer not too hot on humans, why does any of this seem like'a bad thing to you?"

And now the part that she kind of hated to admit to...

Humans; they were impossible to escape, impossible to discount, infuriating, self-righteous, judgmental, understanding. Anything and everything they _could_ be, they were. Anything and everything they _should_ be, they weren't. They hated and loved themselves in equal measure. They found absolutely everything about every other race superior to their own yet refused to surrender their identity. Worst of all, she had a bit of that inside of her, so in a way, it was self loathing...another illogical staple of their existence.

"Human kind is absolutely essential for galactic stability."

"Oh come on! You have to know that's bullshit. If humanity all got killed off tomorrow y'all would be able to step over our corpse and carry the flag on. You'd learn from our mistakes, right the wrongs, do the right thing, climb the hill, get the top score, whatever. You can't convince me that humanity is the glue holdin' everything together." He was genuinely irritated by the assertion. This was the human problem...he had been conditioned to believe there was nothing singular or special about his race even as their science and genetic manipulation made them the heartiest species in the immediate galactic neighborhood.

"Sadly, yes."

"_Bullshit_. Y'all would be just fine without humans to cause problems."

"What about Vulcan?" She countered.

"Wouldn't have happened. Wouldn't'a been an issue if it wasn't for someone gettin' 'em all cranked up to kick _our_ asses. You said that much yourself." He sighed, lowering his head with arms once again folded across his chest, "Alright, well, I 'spose we could keep arguin' this until rapture at this point. So what 'sactly do you need me t'do?"

"Krios stands as the potential proxy conflict that will serve to prematurely escalate a full fledged conflict before humanity is prepared for the level of engagement necessary."

"It's gonna be that bad?"

"Not as such...humanity and it's allies would prevail, but the cost would serve to sap your people both strategically and politically at a time where such an even is not conducive to the stability of the universe."

"Okay, so what do I need to do?" He asked again.

"Exploit the Klingon honor system to make this bout of military adventurism seem foolish to the Klingon Empire. In particular, you must disgrace the Klingon commander of the force on planet now."

Tucker shrugged, "So what...slap him across the face with a glove and challenge him to pistols at dawn?"

"You will need to appoint a second who will fight his second to the death. The losing side will leave the planet. If the Klingon commander is forced to evacuate, the dishonor of having lost to humans will stymie further aggression for at least a few years. In that time it is our belief that your relations with Vulcan, Rigel, Tellar, and Andoria will be firmly cemented."

"Second, nothin'! I ain't lettin' one of those boys do my fightin' for me." His voice was indignant, outraged at the very thought of utilizing a proxy.

"You are an engineer! What could you possibly know about fighting Klingons?" In every universe she knew about, Charles Tucker was barely competent to cross a street given the degree to which he seemed accident prone. The very idea of Tucker in a battle to the death with a Klingon...

He arched both brows, leaning back into a defiant contrapposto. "They really didn' brief you well, did they?"

"I know very little about the Charles Tucker the third of this reality. But based on what I know of other incarnations of your person, it is next to impossible that you would prevail against a hardened warrior."

He nodded, "Prepare to be surprised, sister."

* * *

><p>"Sir, all but two of the enemy surface contacts have begun moving towards the planet at one eighth impulse."<p>

Nassir fastened the chin strap on his helmet, "Ahead one third, move to intercept, remove capacitor locks for all forward phaser arrays. Lock targeting solutions for photonic torpedoes, five eighths maximum yield."

The door to the CIC swung open and lieutenant commander Snellis came charging in, one hand holding his helmet in place while the other pulled tight the Velcro straps securing his body armor.

"Time to test out the non-conventional stuff, Andy." Al-Sistani muttered to his former XO.

"How many incoming?"

"Three."

Snellis made a snorting sound, "That's all? What about the other two?"

"Haven't moved an inch, haven't locked any targeting solutions, no missiles in the tubes, most of their power is routed to shields and structural integrity...it's like they don't even want to fight."

"They might not, sir."

"If they don't twitch us, I'll leave them alone." Nassir declared with a nod. "Mister Smith, contact engineering and inform them we need the power plant at one hundred percent, we're going to try to burn out some EPS systems."

The operation officer replied briskly, "Aye, sir."

Snellis crossed to fire control and began directing firing solution plots and preferred target locations as Major Musashibo approached Al-Sistani, weapon at the ready. The Arab officer looked to the marine opposite number, "Your boys prepared to repel boarders?"

"Aye aye, sir. Locked, cocked, and ready to rock."

Nassir reached down the check the seating for his own sidearm and grunted, "Maybe we'll get lucky and you guys will get to board one of them."

Benkei let out a half chuckle, "Tease...getting our hopes up."

"Contact, shots incoming!"

Nassir snatched the hand set, holding the mouthpiece to his lips and calmly intoned a collision warning, "Incoming, all hands brace for impact, repeat, all hands brace for impact."

The Klingon torpedo struck the shields, the motor and fusing circuits cutting from the electro-magnetic feedback then struck the hull at a less than ideal angle. The weapon skipped up and away before detonating, spending its explosive energy in the void between the shields and hull. The malfunctioning fusing circuits started the bleed-over matter to anti-matter reaction slowly, producing a burn rather than an explosion. The plasma licked the hull but produced no real effect. Unless the Klingons put the projectiles at almost an ninety degree angle to the hull, they weren't going to get any use from their weapons.

The ship shuddered slightly, a slight lurch at the moment of detonation, floor grates rattled, monitors shook, but nothing really happened. The shield banks showed a momentary drop in power but they quickly bounced back.

"That'll get 'em thinking." Snellis crowed.

"Give them a full spread, mister Landon, six rounds against the lead vessel." Nassir ordered the missile control officer who began inputting the fire mission order to the fire control system.

"Batteries two and three, dorsal, lock solutions on the closest enemy craft."

"I wonder how good these are going to work, we might be able to shelve the railguns entirely." Nassir posited as he stepped closer to Snellis in the center of the CIC.

"We're getting way to used to this kind of stuff, sir."

The Iraqi XO chuckled, "Yeah, you're right, I remember when I used to feel nervous before a fire fight."

Snellis looked at him with narrowed eyes and a guarded expression, "You're not, even a little, now?"

"Not really, no...I'm pretty sure I know exactly how this is going to go."

Snellis let out another crowing guffaw, "We've gotten spoiled, haven't we?"

"They're going to have to drag me off this boat, mister Snellis." Al-Sistani grinned.

* * *

><p>Archer was quietly stewing in his own juices. A.G. was hitting on Hernandez, almost predictably, but he couldn't do a thing about it, just sit there and watch it happen, let it happen. He wanted to deck on the son of a bitch, knock that smug half-smile and self-assured expression off his first-in-line-for-a-star face. There had been the one first fight fifteen years ago, he had been winning until A.G. cheated and grabbed a bottle to hit him with. The fact that they were being his taxi right now...<p>

No, it didn't matter that they were heading over to Risa anyway, he just didn't want _him_ to be the one catching the ride.

He would have to get Erika to sneak up to his quarters tonight, if for no other reason to keep her out of A.G.'s reach and to find out if, maybe, some of this cheap-cologne charm was actually working on her. Damnit, how could he still be made to feel insecure by this prick after so many years?

"Tucker, huh?" A.G. chuckled, lifting his iced tea to his lips and taking a sip, "I always kind of figured him for a fairy."

That snapped into place in Jon's mind like a trigger being depressed, "Excuse me?"

Robinson shrugged, "Tucker and...that limey guy of yours...Reed. I remember how buddy buddy they were on the Togo...had them both pegged for..." he snapped his wrist.

Jon felt his face redden and was just about to lay into the other captain when a high piercing laugh from Hernandez side-lined him. "Tucker and Reed, gay?"

"They don't seem that way to you?" A.G. countered, "I mean, always buddied up, and as far as Tucker and that Vulcan...I mean, who knows how that worked out, maybe they have the same taste in shoes, not like she'd have to be anything more than his beard anyway."

Oh...so he was just being stupid, he could let that slide.

"A.G., you're talking about two of the guys with the longest respective trails of broken hearts in MCS."

"Oh come on, that's gotta just be for show. They want to both look like one of the guys but when nobody is looking..."

Hernandez slipped right back in, "Tucker is nailing Kriosian princesses and seducing Vulcans."

Robinson shrugged, half dismissive, half indifferent. He didn't really care one way or another, but his opinion was still going to be colored by his perception. No use arguing the point any further, "I can't wait to get my hands on that boat of his."

Archer chuckled sardonically, "You honestly think that's going to happen?"

"Course it will, why wouldn't it?"

Archer steepled his fingers. "Face it, A.G., if you line us both up next to Trip Tucker, guess who the pogues are?"

"He's a fucking engineer, Jon."

"An engineer with five bronze stars, four silver stars, two Naval DSMs, a cross, and God only knows what else after what happened in Romulan space. Master Parachutist with combat jump star, a combat action badge for each day of the week, command ashore, explosive ord disposal and in case I forgot anything else he's qualified MARSOC. What can either of us say compared to that at this juncture?"

"We've both been at it longer." Robinson declared frankly, lifting his high-ball and taking a sip of the Cuba Libre he had been nursing most of the evening.

"And probably always will, neither one of us are going to get out of the game any time soon, but Trip...he's got a family to live for. He's got something to walk away for, and if I know him as well as I used to think I did, his current XO is probably going to wind up the best skipper to come out of MCS in two decades. And that's exactly what our job is...to make sure the officers that follow us are better than we were. It's evolution, to pass on the best of us and nurture the best in the those that follow." Archer declared, lifting his old-fashioned and draining the whiskey inside.

"Here here." Erika invoked, lifting her own old fashioned and putting away what was left of the ginger ale and bourbon inside.

"That the speech you're going to use when you're bucking for chancellorship of Annapolis or Frisco?" Robinson asked with a skeptical smirk.

"I think once I get my star I might be okay with retiring, actually. I've made my contribution; Tucker and once they can find a boat good enough to put Erika in the big chair and I'll have passed on what I can." Archer stood, considering this the end of the conversation and not wanting to let A.G. foul his mood further.

"That's slack-ass, Archer." A.G. shook his head in barely muted disgust.

"I dunno, sounds like he's making sense to me." Hernandez countered, giving Jon a barely noticeable wink, he'd earned himself a little reward. Not because he said what she wanted to hear, but because he had meant it. She had been able to read the bullshit on him from the first time she had met him when he was 24 years old and she was still a very impressionable nineteen.

Even as impressionable as she was, how swept up in his charm and looks and confidence...the easy smile and quick wit...

And his thighs...God his thighs...

He positively owned those running shorts, knowing they were too short and showing off too much of his legs. She could have probably overlooked everything else about him but his legs were just so...and they were still fantastic even after all these years. But even back then he had laid on a thick layer of the bravo sierra, and she had called him on it even when every other girl was swooning. That's what had caught his eye, her gumption, her fire. Her plebe year at San Francisco and she already had a lieutenant junior grade on the hook, and what a catch he was too. She still looked at him as the best fish in the pond, after all these years, especially when lined up with a egotistical blow-hard like A.G. Robinson.

"Well..." Archer turned, giving Robinson a challenging glare before turning back to return Erika's wink, "Good thing I don't answer to you, isn't it?"

* * *

><p>"You have invited this disaster you arrogant p'tahk!" Duras leveled a recriminate finger at Khorr. The fool had decided to force the issue and now...<p>

"Your warriors, if you can call them that, have not been the ones bleeding, Duras, mind your tongue or I will cut it out." Khorr growled between gasping breaths.

The old man was soft, too comfortable with his position and status; stupid and powerful, the worst possible combination. Duras looked down at the pathetic blow-hard and fought back the urge to strike now. Even if he did, his loyal sycophants would be upon him before his own loyal warriors could defend him. No, he would not be the end of Khorr today, it was likely that the humans would be. At some point the troops that had beamed in from the _vo'GuhV_ had been rendered combat ineffective and the small contingent of humans and their Kriosian charges had started stalking the "diplomatic" representatives from the Empire. All attempts to flee had failed, the humans caught up with them, and that's when one of them had issued the challenge. The one in the black helmet and vest, he identified himself as Captain Charles Tuckers, and he pointed directly at Khorr and called him out by name.

"You will resolve this issue, now, Khorr or I will leave you here like some honorless cur for the humans to pick apart as they see fit." The only way Khorr and his men would escape Krios now was at Duras' sufferance, all of the ships the colonel had detailed to the planet had been destroyed or crippled moments before by the human warship in orbit. Duras had instructed his ships to hold their station and had not been molested by the monstrous human battle cruiser.

"I ain't got all day, either you get yer ass down here and fight or I'm just gonna cut loose and put the whole lot'a you underground." The human shouted.

Khorr sneered at Duras, "Then I name you the champion to fight in my stead."

"You are a fool, Khorr. I am a representative of the house of Toral and of the Empire, I am not your lap-dog and will not do your bidding. Fight your own battle." Duras looked down at the human warriors, he had participated in the offensive years earlier, not as a raider but in some of the ground battles against the human military. It was a chance for glory, fighting against an opponent who could at least fight back. The memory of the ferocity of human warriors still served to cow him even to this day. They were a fantastic adversary, something to measure up too, something to emulate and aspire to be. To fight against the humans was suicide, and there was not logic in intentionally picking a lost cause without truth or justice behind it. "If you are fortunate, he may kill you quickly and spare you the shame of showing fear."

"Klagg!" The older warrior roared, turning his head to look to one of his subordinates, a younger warrior, large in size and with a surly disposition, even as Klingons went. "Dispose of this human vetlh."

He stepped forward, taking a bat'leth from a subordinate and began down the butte on which the warriors stood to the open park where the human stood. From the distance at which they were it was impossible for Duras to determine how much bigger Klagg was to this Captain Tucker, not that it really would matter except as a matter of reach. Humans, particularly their warriors, were easily as strong as the best Klingon kind had to offer. The human began to shrug off his gear, dropping the load bearing equipment and helmet unceremoniously on the ground, handing off his rifle and side-arm to a subordinate soldier before shrugging off the armored vest and camouflaged jacket. From his belt the human drew a long hafted hand axe and a singled edged knife gripping the former in the right hand and the latter under-hand in the left. With Klagg close now, Duras could see that the Klingon had advantage in neither height nor bulk.

He was doomed...

Duras hated to admit it, but everything he could read on this human seemed to indicate he had Klagg so far outclassed that the younger Klingon wasn't even aware of it.

Klagg began spinning the sword in lazy ellipses, as one would when fighting bat'leth to bat'leth.

Foolish.

The human extended the hand-axed, pointing it in the direction of the weapon Klagg held, "You'd better get'ta work with that thing, you ain't gonna get a second chance."

The Klingon sprung forward, spitting an oath as he did, blade back and overhead. An overhand cleave; very conventional...

If your target neglects to move...the human did not.

Side stepping he brought the hatchet up and swung downwards, aiming for Klagg's thigh and knee. The warrior turned away at the last moment, just missing the cutting edge of the hand-axe before it could slice through and separate the tendons on his leg, rendering him crippled.

The assault wasn't over though, as the human spun to bring the knife blade rocketing towards Klagg's face and neck, he barely had enough time to bring the flat of the sword up to deflect the blow and before he could make a counter thrust the human was already trotting away.

Klagg charged, sensing an opportunity that wasn't there. This was, of course, exactly what the human must have been waiting for. It only took him a moment to hook the hatchet inside the grip of the bat'leth while the knife in his hand caught the horns on the outer sides of the blade.

The Klingon panicked, fearing the weapon would be taken from him he plunged the blade into the dirt only to have one of the human's boots clamp down holding the blade hard against the soil and with a quick kick from the other foot...

Klagg stared for a moment, shocked...his bat'leth destroyed, the high carbon steel, so excellent at holding an edge could not give nearly as much as would have been necessary to avoid snapping from a sharp blow...like a kick from an augmentee human.

Klagg staggered back, holding half the bat'leth in his hand, looking at it in shock for a moment to lowering the piece to see where it's partner resided, still stuck in the ground.

The human flipped the hatchet from his hand condescendingly. It was a statement Duras understood immediately; _I no longer need this, you're no longer a challenge for me_.

He felt a chill of fear at the same moment he experience a prick of racial pride that was unwilling to accept the insult from a human. The ego, the temerity of this human; it was galling but it seemed, thus far, to be well justified. What was strange was how little protection his garb offered compared to that of a Klingon warrior. Without the protective vest and the jacket he had little more than a flimsy piece of short-sleeved fabric protecting his chest, yet he made no attempt to ward himself.

No, that wasn't true...

He used the violence of action as his shield, by forcing Klagg to defend, the human removed the threat of the Klingon's offensive ability.

Klagg lunged with the broken half of the bat'leth he still held, catching the human by surprise for a split second. It was clear that the fair haired being hadn't expected that sort of attack, but to his credit he responded instantly, locking Klagg's right wrist with the blade then moving the Klingon warrior's arm down and slamming the edge of his hand into Klagg's throat. Khorr's warrior bent forward, grabbing at his throat, allowing the human to step inside Klagg's guard, knocking him to his knees then locking his right arm and quasi-bat'leth wielding hand into an exaggerated and obviously painful arm bar.

Klagg dropped the blade which the human stepped out from his position behind the kneeling Klingon to kick away and, releasing the arm and wrist, began taking quick steps away. With a quick toss he switched the knife from him left hand to his right even as Klagg fought his way to his feet and pulled his d'k tahg.

"Bout gaw'dang time..." The human said, his voice barely audible at the distance.

Klagg just howled...

It was over now, Duras realized it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The human had been toying with him the whole time, trying to force a feral rage.

And Klagg...fool that he was...was going to oblige.

He charged and didn't even fully realize the first time the human cut him. He stopped a few feet away and when he turned, it was almost as if the energy had left him. Still, Klagg moved to attack again, this time there was no subtlety as the human caught the Klingon's right arm and stabbed him twice in the abdominal and lower thoracic area. He felt that, knew that it happened, and that's when the fear hit.

The moment you knew you were dying, were being killed, all the composure would vacate and an individual would do anything in their power to stop that next blow from coming. There was no shame in survival when you were the one trying to survive. To the other Klingons, of course, Klagg's scramble, his hands trying to slap and push away, his knife hand moving wildly hoping any cut he could land would repulse the next potentially mortal blow, was shameful; a thing to be ridiculed. His name would be spat upon, the story a lesson to young warriors on what not to do. The cult of death, the fetishistic need to "die well" meant that Klagg should have just stopped trying to prevent his murder.

None of it worked...

Two more blows into the mid thoracic came, up under the ribs, quick blows, the knife only sliding in about four inches or so, but more than enough in the situation.

Duras watched as the agonizing seconds rolled on for what was an eternity for the spectator.

Seven, eight, nine...

Klagg was letting out a shrill cry now, screaming for it to stop.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen...

The cries were now horse, hollow sounds as Klagg allowed himself to fall and tried to crawl away, the blood beginning to soak his clothes now. His voice sounded weak, tired, slurred like in a drunken state. A gurgling call for medical attention.

Khorr had sent the warrior to the butcher's block.

Unforgivable.

The human extended his blade, pointing it up the hill, Klagg's blood finally visible along the blade and up his hand and forearm. He was point the tip in the direction of Khorr, challenging him to descend the butte and do his own fighting.

What Khorr did next was so worthy of disgust...

He tried to run, to flee, to escape judgement for his actions, it was not the act of a Klingon, he was no _longer_ Klingon. He was just flesh to be cut, bones to be snapped...

Duras actually enjoyed the feeling that shoving the mek'leth into the targ's ponderous gut and pulling across, disemboweling the coward as was befitting.

Khorr fell in a heap, and as he pushed past the body he raised his voice, "Kriosian monarchs, I speak for the empire. We wish no further aggression towards or from you."

The first monarch pair looked at one another, then she looked to the human captain who simply nodded.

"We will hear you."

"The Klingon Empire has no such ambition, we do not seek to annex Krios but to be partners with you. I seek no further conflict with your government and certainly none further with the humans. What say you?"

The human captain shrugged as they once again fixed eyes on him, "I dunno, sounds like he's making a pretty fair deal."


	40. Chapter 40

"Home, and don't spare the horses." Nassir was already tearing off his helmet and heading for the hatch out of the CIC, before Snellis could even begin relaying the proper orders to navigation.

When lieutenant Pritchard had contacted them requesting beam up and recommending quarantine for possible blood-born pathogens Al-Sistani had been concerned. The fact that Tucker wasn't the one calling for the extraction order further concerned him. With a quarantine order they would be beaming right into the decon lock-out chamber right next to armory #2. Adjacent to the armory and decon chamber was an automated transporter capable of allowing direct access to decon for those requiring quarantine and the armory itself for Marine Boarding or Shore parties. There were three other such armories capable of handling three sections each built around a modular design that allowed easy replacement, repair, or, in a truly catastrophic event, detachment from the ship. Leaving the CIC he immediately ran over to an access ladder and with a down-ladder warning he placed his feet on either side of the hand rails and slid down the two decks to the access corridor that would take him to the decontamination lock-out chamber.

It suddenly dawned on him, perhaps to his own amusement, that the captain was, in effect, trapped in a small room with fifteen other men all of whom were on a high protein diet. The testosterone levels in that room had to be at critical levels. The hall was relatively full, of course, there were gun batteries and three armories on this level, side-stepping, slipping along the wall, it was impeding his progress.

"Make a hole! Make a hole!" He shouted ahead as crewmen and Marines pressed themselves back against the corridor walls allowing Nassir to jog towards the decon chamber. When he reached the chamber, the room was predictably packed with the Marines. He was relatively sure there was some sort of regulation to keep this many marines from being congregated in the same place at the same time except in event of a war. They parted for him, making a path to the view window where Dr. Manoop was looking over the scan results from the chambers medical sensors. Sitting on a bench he spotted Tucker in his NWU camouflage trousers, boots, and the olive drab marine style T-shirt. His right arm from the hand to almost the elbow was covered in a slick of drying blood. His left fist was resting on his hip with the right elbow propped on the adjacent knee, his jaw working at a piece of chewing gum while his eyes and forehead illustrated some pronounced dissatisfaction on his part.

"What happened down there?" Nassir spoke into the mic to the commanding officer, getting Trip to look up.

"I don' wanna talk about it."

"That bad?"

Tucker shook his head, his jaw stopping for a moment, "It was all this sonuvabitch Khorr's fault...decided for himself he was gonna annex the planet. So I challenge him to a duel...he wins we leave, I win he leaves...course whoever lost wa'n't walkin' away but you get the idea. So the sonuvabitch sends one'a his grunts to do the fightin' and I end up cuttin' him up real bad." Tucker lifted his bloody right arm to illustrate his statement, "Only the fat bastard decides he isn't 'bout to have t'fight me too and goes to run away."

Nassir arched concerned eyebrows, "Then what?"

"Well, the other Klink big wig, some guy named Duras, opens Khorr up like a piñata and makes nice with the Kriosians." Tucker flipped both hands up in an exasperated gesture before returning his right elbow to his knee and left fist to his hip. "Actually seemed like a reasonable offer made in good faith so I couldn't very well be the asshole who said, 'no, this is all or nothin', only way one of us gets the planet is t'kill the other,' its the Kriosian's decision after all."

"So, in short...we just ended up helping the Klingons diplomatically by removing their IQ inhibitors?" Nassir asked.

"Yeah...we gave 'em a wall to wall counselin' session then handed them 'sactly what they wanted." He shook his head, angrily, "Kriosians seemed plenty happy with it too."

"Sir...?"

"Yeah?"

"I made you talk about it." Al-Sistani grinned at his commanding officer, eliciting an exasperated but amused smile from Tucker.

"I'm gonna get you for this one'a these days."

"Aye aye, sir."

* * *

><p>"The issue extends far deeper than we had initially believed."<p>

T'Var felt her control at risk of slipping when the pseudo-Vulcan in front of her reported on the integrity of the continuity arc. Nothing had been attained; the divergence had not been significantly impacted.

"So, we prematurely revealed out existence without achieving anything?"

"No," His eyebrows bobbed, "We determined that the issue runs deeper than we initially believed, and we learned that this universe's Tucker is agreeable to our intervention."

"You mean manipulation." T'Var said with barely hidden bitterness.

"Are you emotionally compromised in this regard?" It was easy, at times, to forget that Romulans were not, in fact, Vulcan anymore.

"No."

His brows popped upwards again, his expression obviously amused, "Sounds like you are. Is it because he is human or because he is your forebear?"

"_He_ is not my forebear, my forebear was the Alpha zero one one Charles Tucker."

"T'Var, it might become necessary for you to accept the fact that T'Pol may have genuinely loved him and wanted to have her children by him."

"I do not care what transpired in-"

"I mean in alpha zero one one, that Tucker, your ancestor." The Romulan laced his fingers together, "Now, before you assert that such a thing is not possible, please consider your own mate and ask yourself if you love him?"

"Love is an emotion."

"And...?"

She sighed, barely, "I do not experience emotions."

"That is patently false, your own actions and responses have negated that premise."

"I suppress my emotions."

He arched an amused brow at her, "I may suppress a cough, that does not mean that my body is not trying to cough."

"You are implying that emotions are a natural response?"

"Yes."

Well, he did have a valid point in that regard. If they did not occur naturally there would be no need to suppress them as basic nature would see to that. But that still presented a question; why? Why had T'Pol deigned to have the sham marriage to Koss?

"I still find it highly illogical and unlikely that T'Pol would have been mated to Koss but chose to allow Charles Tucker to sire her children."

The Romulan opened his hands in a gesture of surrender, "What bias would they have encountered should she have chosen to be openly mated to the human?"

"I fail to see how that is relevant if they were, indeed, in love with one another as you contend."

"Yes, well..." He picked up a PADD, looking over it, his body language indicating that he had spent enough time on this particular debate, "I never said emotions were, by nature, rational. Fear of being ostracized can be just as powerful an emotion as love, and irrationality is a hallmark of emotional beings."

"So why would you not surrender them to pure logic?"

He lowered the PADD, looking off and away for a moment, then making eye contact simply stated, "Because I wouldn't be me."

And that, was that. There was very little room for debate with that sort of contention. It was certainly true that for most being to be distinct they had to form their own set of reactions some of which seemed to fly in the face of convention or practical response. While instinct, nature, genetics may dictate a certain response, it was quite common for experience and personal preference to cause another. T'Var knew she was not immune to this particular affectation of individuality; her mate, mother, father, cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings had all at time softly chided her utterly irrational distaste for humans, even after the revelation had been made about the parentage of their family line. While the children of Charles Tucker and T'Pol may have been the first children born of human and Vulcan, they most certainly had not been the last.

In her mind she still entertained the thought that perhaps T'Pol had been victim to the mercurial temperament and uncontrolled lust of humans, but now she was beginning to wonder if that was indeed true and if it was not as Sivik contended; that a Vulcan had, even in her rational home universe, loved a human.

* * *

><p>D'Varr's expression couldn't be confused for anything but muted alarm, something that hadn't been common at all of late. Life in the camp had been good for them, well, as good as could be expected for prisoners of war, but now something had him quite clearly concerned. Valak approached his subordinate who had, just minutes before, been in the administration building.<p>

"What is it?"

"We are going home." D'Varr answered in a low distracted home.

"That's good!" The centurion exclaimed.

"It's the reason we are being returned home that concerns me."

Valak crossed his arms, in his mind no reason could be a good reason except one that indicated an escalation to the war; prisoner exchanges, capitulation by the empire, some dark political machinations. "What reason did they give?"

"Our military capacity…the human's gutted it. The marshaling yards, the fleet docks, the cloaking device production facilities…"

Valak's eyes widened, "What do you mean?"

"The new comers from a few weeks back…they were all captured in the initial thrust by the human forces…a massive warship came in with escorts and destroyed it all." The uhlan seemed haunted at the very idea.

"Did they…" He couldn't finish the sentence. He couldn't really imagine the humans going that far, perhaps the Andorians, or maybe even the Vulcans as part of their need for revenge over what they had done when they invaded Vulcan…but never the humans, they didn't seem to have it in them as near as he could tell. Even when he had watched as one of their Marines had shot the Tal'shiar members in the back of the head back after their defeat; it had seemed bizarrely…just.

"No, praise the wings, no…but our military has been set back decades. I am not entirely sure we could even defend ourselves adequately, but they didn't slaughter anyone."

Surat approached, speaking as he did; clearly having overheard what had been said. "How reliable is this information? It is possible that they have misled us."

"It's all from actual transmissions originating in the empire. One of their listening posts picked them up and cracked the encryption." D'Varr stood silently for a moment, "I think this is the end of the empire…we're going to have to rebuild our culture."

It was beyond problematic that the humans could listen in to their communications; it meant that primary channels were compromised and, if the Romulan Command was not aware, they could be compromising themselves for weeks and months to come. Depending on method the humans had for interception, there might not be any easy fix available. He could already imagine the warship crews that would be tasked for months and years to come of combing through systems nav grid by nav grid on the off chance it was probes or satellites that had been left behind by the human warships.

"So we are all being released then?" Surat inquired, not seeming to give any additional thought to the finality of the pronouncement that their government was dying.

"No, they are releasing us in phases from what I heard. The releases are on the basis of our good behavior, as far as the administrators are concerned. We will be sent home first."

Valak leaned back on his heels, chewing at his lower lip as he ran a hand over the shaved-close hair of his scalp. "I am not sure I want to…"

Surat cocked a brow, his face showing barely hidden concern and disapproval, "I beg your pardon?"

"Think about it…what do we say when we get home? What is there to say? If we had won, if we had succeeded, maybe none of this would have happened, but it was all wrong to begin with." He looked up, shifting his eyes from his commanding officer to his subordinate then back again, "We are the tools of bad policy…everything that happened was caused or facilitated by us. We're the guilty ones because we didn't question, didn't resist and, in the wake of that, didn't win."

Surat grinned at his subordinate, "Valak, you sound like you have the makings of a senatorial career…"

The centurion's countenance grew stonier as he looked back to his commander, "What a horrible thing to say."

D'Varr shrugged, finding a bit or mirth in the exchange, smirking at the centurion and stating in an even tone, "I'd vote for him."

* * *

><p>Twenty eight days overdue...<p>

Just shy of a full month, if it hadn't been for the fact that they had expended almost all of their ordnance, Trip was relatively sure they would have kept them out for another fifteen days at least. He had, in fact, been forced to invoke the strategic security clause as reasoning for them to put back in to take on more ordnance. Of course, he had been able to track and make record of about one hundred seventy things that needed to be smoothed out or refined on in the design. This wasn't going to be a major retrofit, just a few bug passes in software, a few improvements to implementation, some things that didn't turn out to be as ergonomic or useful as he had initially believed.

The feeling of Earth's gravity snapped him back to the immediacy of what was occurring. The massive C-77 transport shuttle had finished taxiing to the point of debarkation and the massive ramps had lowered letting in a glut of hot wind, merciless and sticky with humidity. The sailors and marines of the crew slung sea-bags and began down the exit gantry and into the bright mid-day sun that made the dark, windowless, sparse interior of the cargo craft seem that much more like some metal and plastic cave, reeking of military issue and scrubbed atmosphere.

The band...and of course there would have to have been a band...was playing, predictably, "Semper Fidelis", with a crisp fanfare that belied the stern countenance of those playing it. In forty seven he had been treated to Handel, and while he never saw much use for a band, he had to admit that Sousa did add a sense of military pertinence to the act of returning from deployment or cruise.

But this was just shakedown...yeah...right; they had achieved more, fought more, covered more distance in the course of this shakedown than most cruisers saw over the course of a three year duty cycle.

Whether by design as a nod to the background and achievements of _Tirpitz_ and her crew. or as a subtle stab at it's erstwhile captain, the band was all garbed in MCUU with eight point soft covers instead of the distinct and contrasting colors of the Marine Dress Blues or even the more conventional Enlisted/Officer Service Uniform.

Of course neither Trip, nor his crew were dressed for fanfare either, the sailors and officers all dressed in the bland dark blue NWUs and the Marines in MCUUs. It was, in effect, a reminder that this was a working man's navy, _Tirpitz_ was not designed for diplomacy and show, it was a work horse, a door-kicker...it existed for one reason and one reason only; to bring the wrath of God to the enemies of Earth and Earth's allies.

Trip noted to himself with some measure of pride that at the very least his sailors waited until they had cleared the yellow safety line on the tarmac before running over to embrace family members. He knew that Musashibo would tolerate nothing less from his marines, as if the discipline wasn't already thoroughly ingrained in MARSOC, which he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was.

The band finished the final notes of "Semper Fidelis" and paused for a moment, before launching into the first notes of "The Thunderer". He grinned to himself, Malcolm would be positively having a fit right now if he had been present. Some Anglo stab of pride had always caused his Briton friend to revile American military marches. On one occasion after they had enjoyed a little over-indulgence by way of a "few" drinks at bar outside Annapolis, Reed had launched into a slurred and profanity-filled tirade after hearing "Garry Owen" playing. When he had spent his ration of vitriol and booze-induced indignity, Tucker had reminded him in a calm but none-to-diplomatic way that "Garry Owen" was, in point of fact, Irish and not American. Which had prompted Reed to fly into another tirade about how Americans seemed to appropriate everything and make it their own.

As his boots hit solid ground he felt a strange surge of relief and melancholy at the same time. Krios had felt just as unnatural to him as standing on a ship, but he was still relatively certain he would be looking at nothing less than three to five hours of briefings before he could drag himself to a transporter hub or shuttle to hop back to Canaveral, then it would a taxi home. T'Pol wouldn't be here, it wasn't logical, it served no purpose and would only serve to distract him from his duty.

But, still...he did feel something in the bond, kind of a strangely pronounced non-presence, as if reminding him it was there...but not there...like something obviously missing from an expected scene, the outline of furniture in carpet, the discoloration on a wall, a bleached spot on clothes. He could literally feel it chewing at him, off to his left, he turned his head and he pulled on every ounce of reserve he had to behave at least as good as his sailors.

She was in a navy blue blouse, gray slacks, loose at her ankles but clinging to the shape of her thighs and perfect little bottom, and perched on her hip was almost the spitting image of himself as a baby with slightly upswept eyebrows and pointy ears waving a miniature MCS flag in his right hand in time with the cymbals. He turned for a moment when he felt Major Musashibo step in close, keeping pace with the slightly taller Tucker, "We'll run H and I so you can E and E out of here, sir."

"Are you suggestin' I go AWOL, major?"

"No sir, I'm just suggesting a bureaucratic absence of presence pending orders to the contrary." The marine officer grinned.

Trip opened his mouth to reply when a voice came over the loudspeaker, just audible over the band, "Now hear this, now hear this, all component crew of task force linebacker; one hundred twenty hour liberty passes have been authorized for all personnel effective immediately, repeat, all component crew of task force linebacker; one hundred twenty hour liberty passes have been authorized for all personnel. That is all."

Trip looked at the major and gave him a disapproving smirk, trying to hide the hint of amusement. Nasir approached with a mischeveous grin on his face as well, suggesting that there had been a plot among the two pull one over on "the old man".

"So what have you two got planned for your bureaucratic absence of presence?" Trip asked as the Iraqi XO drew close.

"I'm going to hang around San Diego or Frisco looking for trouble, and once I've managed enough mischief there I'll probably head over the Quantico to find some more." Benkei replied with brutal candor.

"Going home to visit the family." Nasir declared, the smile disappearing for a moment as his face took on an uncharacteristically open look, "Come by and visit, I can show you around Tikrit, I know my family is dying to meet you."

Trip nodded, feeling a strange kind of comfort in the tacit acknowledgement on the part of his XO that he considered him a friend, "I'll do that."

Al-Sistani grinned, "Good deal, it's an open invitation, no need to call in advance. Bring T'Pol and Solan too, I'm sure Iraq is a bit more her speed than east Florida."

Tucker nodded to his XO again, then reached out and shook the Marine commander's hand, "Don't get in _too_ much trouble, it would suck if the kicked you back over to macvee for bad behavior after only a single cruise."

"Sir, I'm marsoc...there's no way they'll ever know it was me."

Trip smirked knowingly, "Carry on, major."

"Yut yut."

Crossing the symbolic yellow line, Trip allowed himself, at least in part, to stop being the captain. Captain Charles Tucker would not cross over to his wife and child until the last sailor or marine had crossed the line representing both literal safety from the flight line and symbolic safety from the dangers of the tour. Trip Tucker on the other hand was chomping at the bit to see his wife and boy whom he had thought about at least once almost every waking minute of every day since they put to "sea" just shy of seven months prior. He was just about to quietly slip on over, thread his way through the crowd to the pair so they could beat feet before the media or brass could corner him.

There was, however, one possible threat he had not considered, and when Machinist's Mate Petty Officer Third Class Taylor approached with what could only be his grandparents in tow, he knew his chance to just slip away was sunk. This was part of the job too, it wasn't just about commanding me, taking them to war and doing everything you could to get them through alive and physically-whole; you had to seem worthy to command. That meant shaking hands with people who spouted the same insipid platitudes over and over not even knowing what they really meant. He could manage a little longer like this, because soon...very soon...it would all be behind him and he'd be home for good this time.

* * *

><p>"I missed you...both of you."<p>

T'Pol looked over to her mate where he sat in the passenger seat of the family ground car. She could feel his overwhelming need to touch her, but he was holding it back likely sensing her own barriers she had erected to keep from allowing herself to become overwhelmed by the continuous feed-back they received from each other. She was as much concerned that she would overwhelm him as she felt concern he could or would overwhelm her.

In a moment like that, with all the raw and genuine emotionality feeding on itself, building the fire in their conjoined katra, she knew she would falter and would not be able to allow herself to be separated from him again.

"I know." She replied, her voice choked as that heaviness in her chest that seemed to creep up and constrict her throat made it hard for her to reply.

He took the hint; he didn't reach out to touch her or say anything further to elicit an emotional response, instead he began talking in terms that suggested that his absence had been short, "The neighborhood association complained about the sehlat yet?"

"I believe they would be reluctant to voice any concern about a sixty three kilogram apex predator that would require them to be close to said predator."

Trip balked, "Damn, he's that big already?"

She nodded, keeping her eyes on the road, battling internally with her desire to exceed the speed limit just to get home faster, she wanted to express how much she had missed him, how glad she was to have him back home.

"He hasn't eaten anyone's dog or cat, yet, has he?"

She arched an amused brow, looking over at her mate for just a moment, "He is very well behaved."

Trip shrugged, speaking in a lower tone, "It could have been a yappy dog..."

In the back seat Solan began his soft babbling speech, designed to get his father's attention. Trip turned in his seat, leaning back to look at his son where he sat in the child safety seat, "What's that, buddy?"

"Some-imes, he does wike dis..." Solan declared in his lilting high voice, the words only half formed as he began to illustrate how the sehlat would lick him, then pointed to the top of his head, "wight hewe."

"Is that right?" Trip grinned at his son, his expression showing genuine delight.

She glanced up in the rearview mirror to watch the exaggerated bob of his head she knew would come. Sure enough, the almost platinum blond locks bounced on his tiny head as he nodded then looked back at his father and said in a very serious tone, "Yes."

"Well, next time you have to lick him back." Trip replied reaching back to give his first-born a gentle tickle.

"He should do no such thing, that is unhygenic." T'Pol countered with distinct indignity.

"Don't say that, mom...you'll be fine right, buddy?" Trip sniped back, the grin on his face getting bigger.

Solan giggled then became serious again, the precision of words despite his flawed pronunciation helping set the child apart as being at least partially Vulcan, "I could getta fuhw-baww."

Trip looked back at her, his face showing his unvarnished amazement at his son's level of comprehension, "Did you teach him about fur balls?"

"I mentioned it once after the sehlat developed one, from that single explanation he derived what a fur ball was and that they are clearly unpleasant."

"Y'all didn't come up with a name for him while I was gone?"

"No." She answered succinctly.

"Well that's not 'sactly fair on him, is it?"

She looked over to her mate, a strange mixture of bewilderment, fear, and desperate longing roiling in the pit of her stomach as she once again allowed herself to be reminded in her part in his de facto betrayal. He truly believed that he would soon be settling into his role as permanent father and husband, leaving the warrior life he had come to hate so much behind once and for all. The part that made it so much worse was that she knew, for a fact, that he would keep on doing it if she wanted it of him because his love for her and their child was that great.

"We had believed you would help us determine an appropriate name for him." She said softly.

He smiled, blithely, contentedly, "That'll be nice, darlin'."

How would she do this? How could she do it in a manner that would serve to wound him in the least way possible; because it would, without a doubt, wound him. It was a repudiation of what they had planned, what they had agreed to. The part of her that was a deeply practical Vulcan could argue it simply; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Rhetoric, however, demanded the question be asked, just how much could and should be expected of an individual? At what point did Charles Tucker III stop being a slave to the needs of the many due simply to the fact that he had the capacity to serve the many? At what point could he become one of the many to whom he had previously been the inadvertent servant too?

She looked over to him as he began to softly whistle to himself, this is typically how he began, in a moment he would be singing to himself, to her it meant that somewhere underneath it all Trip Tucker was trying to break out of the shell of martial ethos, to be free of its shackles and constraints, a repressive encasing that would be slapped back on him all too soon.

"I picked up my bag, went lookin' for a place to hide, when I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side. I said 'hey Carmen, c'mon lets go down town,' she said 'I gotta go but my friend can stick around'." He crooned softly, looking out at the small forest of palmettos that constituted the Gemini Beach State Park. There was a strangely melancholic look on his face and she could just barely sense the amount of turmoil occurring in his own mind.

He was hiding something himself, blocking her just as surely as she had been blocking him. She knew the subtle nuances of his emotions now, even when he had erected mental barriers there were still hints of what was occurring in his mind. This time there was kind of a desperation that seeped past the wall; the sense that there was something he knew he could not escape, a kind of gnawing finality that seemed to prevent any recourse. There was also a little nervousness...it seemed marginally detached from the desperation but not completely so. She could already tell this had something to do with his former dalliances with Krios' first-monarch, but she somehow knew that he had remained appropriately behaved in the wake of their former sexual relationship. She had no doubt that Kaitamma had attempted to rekindle the relationship but his threads of worry had more to do with his fear over her reaction specifically, not over anything inappropriate on his part simply because he was innocent of any bad behavior.

There was something else too; she picked up on it suddenly, a tiny thread of through that had seemed to slip completely past his barriers. It was so small he probably didn't even realize the process was going on himself, part of his mind was evaluating a point of concern that was more on the instinctive level. The fact that he wasn't experiencing a high level of anticipatory sexual arousal seemed strange and bothersome.

This would be an intensely difficult next few days.


	41. Chapter 41

Trip watched with amusement as Solan lay face down on the carpet, his tiny body wracked by long deep breaths as he quietly snored. The Sehlat approached, taking a few deep sniffs then gave his hair a few perfunctory licks to ensure it was in the right place before the saber-tooth began to attend to his own grooming. Tucker made eye contact with the smilidon and grinned, "I think we must'a worn him out."

The creature huffed, extending his hind right paw forward and began licking between his toes. Trip had decided the first thing he wanted to do with his leave was to have a good run, not because he needed the exercise, not that he enjoyed running so terribly much, but mainly because it was Earth's gravity, Earth's sun, Earth's atmosphere. The Sehlat had, of course, jumped at the opportunity, rising excitedly and trotting to the door once Trip had presented the leash and harness. Solan, on the other hand, had required some finesse; he didn't like riding in the child carrier but Trip had managed to deftly manipulate his son into agreeing to go.

The little half-Vulcan had been adamant about _not_ having to once again ride in the bouncing child carrier while his father ran at full speed down the hot road for miles on end. Trip had been convinced that Solan would have jumped at the chance to spend the time with him.

"Hey, buddy! I'm goin' for a run, wanna come?"

Solan had furrowed his tiny brow, "No!"

"Ahh! C'mon! It'll be fun! Just you'n me and teeth." As he had been calling the Sehlat for the last...three minutes at least.

Solan's face darkened, irritated clearly, "No!"

Trip fake pouted, sticking out his lower lip in an exagerate fashion, cocking his head to the side and frowned. The child just let out a single exasperated sigh then replied, "Kkay."

His son had conspired to cut the run short by goading his father into a faster and faster running speed, the result of which was simply a bouncier ride for him and a much greater distance covered. The Sehlat easily kept up, at times running at a full bounding gait, seeming to enjoy the opportunity to run with utter abandon rather than the normal stolid and lethargic pace at which T'Pol chose to walk him. When they had reached the Robert P. Murkshe Memorial Park, Solan was already so exhausted by the ordeal of being along for the ride that he made not attempt to goad his father onward and had simply said in a weak and exhausted voice, "Wanna go home now."

He slowed his pace going home to keep from bouncing around Solan as much. It had been a ten mile round trip, more than adequate as a work out as far as Trip was concerned. Instead of the normal laden backpack he had opted for a sling-bag across his chest with a sandbag, it forced him to work more on maintaining his balance and as a result had made the exercise more strenuous when coupled with his son's demand for more speed pushing him to run back to back to back four minute miles.

When they reached the house Solan was utterly exhausted, hot, and sweaty much like his father, with the exception being that Trip felt invigorated by the exercise. He took off and put away the sling bag, weight vest, and child carrier and immediately took his son to the bathroom and stuck him in the tub before hoping in himself and taking a shower. Solan relaxed visibly under the luke warm water, his warring biologies meant his blood was warmer than a Vulcan's but cooler than a human's, as such his preferred temperature equilibrium was in a strange middle-ground between the two. He had actually nodded off twice in the shower while Trip shampooed his corn-silk colored hair and washed behind his little pointed ears. Upon drying off and re-dressing his son, Trip brought the toddler into the living room and lay him down on the rug in his preferred spot. Solan opened his eyes for a moment then closed them, taking a deep yawning breath then immediately fell back asleep.

"How far did you go?"

Trip turned from where he sat on the floor and looked up at T'Pol as she approached, "We ran all the way to Murkshe and then headed back."

She crossed her feet, one over the other and lowered herself into a sitting position gracefully, "You must have been running very fast."

"He kept sayin' 'faster daddy, faster' so I ran faster." He grinned, knowing exactly what his son had been trying to do and finding himself deeply amused by how clever it had been. "He was tryin' to wear me out, but it kinda backfired on him."

"That is fortunate as I will require some of your energy as well."

Trip leaned back on his elbow, turning his head to look at his mate, "Somethin' need fixin'?"

"Trip..."

"Somethin' didn't break did it?"

"No...Trip-"

"Oh Lord...you want to remodel don't ya? What is it? The counters? I know we both kinda hated the color."

"Trip!" She grabbed his face, pressing her lips to his to shut him up, a twist on the same technique he frequently used on her. She held for a moment before parting and sitting back, "Do you understand now?"

He arched his brows, his expression amused, "You know, they put somethin' in the food on ships like the T that totally ruins sex drive."

"Is that correct?"

"Yep, there's gonna be alotta disappointed wives'n girlfriends tonight." His face became a bit more dour. "I dunno, maybe they don't, but it always sort of seems like it."

"Something else is bothering you." She declared softly.

"Yeah, somethin's botherin' you too."

"How do you know?" She countered with a measure of indignity.

"You wouldn't be blockin' me otherwise."

She looked away, so he could read her that well after all. He had it pegged, everything about her behavior said so, from the fact she quickly evaded his eye contact to the now rigid way she was sitting. The real question is, what was she hiding? He decided to start with the nuclear option.

"Did you meet someone new?"

She turned her head back to him, furrowing her brow in confusion, "I have become acquainted with many people in the last seven months."

Trip leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head, "That's not what that means, darlin'. 'Someone new' is the nice way of sayin' 'I've fallen for' or 'have been screwin' around' with someone else. It's part of the 'let 'im down easy' code language for a dear John letter."

"So it implies a romantic or sexual relationship in which the absentee partner is cuckold?"

Trip nodded, not needing further confirmation when he felt the wave of disgust at the idea and indignity that he would think that. "Pretty much."

"I find-"

"-the idea offensive. Just wanted to get that one out of the way darlin'."

T'Pol gave him a cold glare, "Perhaps I should wonder about your fidelity in the wake of your assignment on Krios."

Trip moved himself around to stare right back into T'Pol's eyes, "Except for the part where you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I didn' even consider it fer a second."

He was right again, and more right he was the more irritated she got. So he would just have to disarm her the same way she disarmed him. He leaned in and met resistant lips and defiant eyes, it was almost to be expected. If she had been human she might have started hitting him by now. The fact she was Vulcan meant she would restrain herself long enough for his feelings to reach her and burn through her quiet anger and doubt. Why, after all this time, they still did this to each other was beyond his ability to understand, but they did and would likely continue to do so.

_You know this isn't fair._

She grabbed his head, keeping him locked in place, _Fair? You were gone seven months without a word, we didn't know if you were alive or..._

_What's this really about?_

She disengaged from his lips and rested her forehead against his, not making eye contact, not wanting too as she felt the surge of guilt and dread well up inside her. She had to do it now, get it done, over with, then maybe...just maybe...they could enjoy the time together rather than just facing a building sense of apprehension that leached away every moment of joy into a numb malaise that would lead up to the moment of ultimate betrayal.

"Trip..." She lowered her head slightly, pressing her forehead to his, feeling the heat of his skin searing against the place where her head touched his, "I do not want you to resign your commission."

He was silent for little more than a moment, "Alright, darlin'...I'm sure they have something for me t'do at Canaveral or Annapolis."

She lifted her eyes, looking into his, "K'diwa...you should remain in command of Tirpitz."

He shifted his head, craning his neck forward to look purposefully back into her eyes, "Did someone pressure you inta this? If anyone...anyone...threatened you or our little boy...I'll kill 'em dead, you un'erstand?"

"K'diwa." She let the barest thread of lament into her voice, "nobody threatened anyone, nobody pressured anyone else. I discussed the matter with admiral Black, and we both believe you would be squandering so much potential if you resigned now."

"Yeah..." He looked away, the disappointment evident on his face, "I've been gettin' alotta that lately."

He leaned back on his elbows, staring off at the wall. His anger, frustration, disappointment, confusion, and a judicious brushing of sadness on top of it all seemed to sizzle quietly in the bond, like an ember; raw and read to catch on any dry tinder and turn into a blaze. Almost as tangible was this sensation of resigned acceptance; a part of him that still eat, slept, drank, and prayed the words duty and the concepts it engendered. There would still be men out fighting and dying for the sake of Earth's sovereign interests, maybe more so now that everywhere seemed to be going hot at once. If he walked away from that now...even with 47, the Xindi, and Vulcan behind him...he could give more.

"It's gonna be hard bein' away from you two." He shook his head slowly.

"It will be hard for us as well, K'diwa. But we know you are doing something worthwhile, something important." She placed her right hand on his arm, feeling the skin, the tightness of the tendon around his elbow, then running her fingers down towards his hands, feeling the coarse sensation of the light colored hair on his forearms.

"Yeah, well..." He looked up at T'Pol, his expression making not attempt to hide his current feelings, "Y'all will have each other..."

"Just because you cannot touch us, or sense us, does not mean we do not still cherish you and long for your presence."

He gave her another skeptical look, allowing his overriding sense of disappointment to color his reactions, "Do you?"

Her expression was genuinely hurt, there was no mistaking it, "Constantly."

"Ahh Darlin'." He replied back softly.

"You are half of my heart and soul, Trip. There are times when your absence is physically painful for me." She declared, doing her best to keep the emotion out of her voice, "If I could be selfish, I would never let you leave me again. However there are concerns that are greater in the grand scheme of things than our relationship."

"That whole 'needs of the many' thing, huh?"

She nodded solemnly.

"When do we get to be part'a that 'many'?"

T'Pol lifted his right hand, the index and middle finger gently tracing along the side of his face, "One day, k'diwa."

He chuckled ruefully, "Tomorrow never comes."

"Is not the human maxim, 'seize the day'?"

"Yeah, 'carpe diem'...well I've gotta lil' chestnut for you too darlin'; 'caveat emptor'."

She arched a confused brow, to say her understanding of Latin was all but non-existent wouldn't be an oversimplification. "I do not understand."

He chuckled, her ability to state the obvious hadn't lessened one bit...it had to be a Vulcan affectation.

"You're tellin' a Tucker to let it all hang out, darlin'...you're bitin' off a bit more than you can chew."

The confused brow abruptly shifted to an amused one, "That would imply that I did not know you as well as I do. I am perfectly aware of the extent to which you can lack inhibition."

He leaned in closer, his lips inches from her left ear, "Unless you've done a full catalog of my brain, darlin'...you ain't seen nothin' yet."

His mind gave no hints beyond the shrouded thoughts back far past his barriers; dark and sensuous and just strong enough to be perceptible to T'Pol who felt herself flush at knowledge that she hadn't even begun to experience her mate's repertoire as a lover. She also experienced a sudden spike of jealousy that he had, undoubtedly, developed these techniques with prior sex partners. Between the two sudden blooms of emotional response she felt her calm threaten to buckle, catastrophically.

"Should we see if your parents can take care of Solan for a day or two?"

Trip frowned at the idea, "Hell no, I wanna spend some time with my boy."

"Then-"

"You can bite my shoulder and I can bite my knuckles...remember?"

She gave him a flustered glare, "When?"

"If you knew when, it'd kinda take the fun out if, wouldn't it?" He teased in a frank tone.

"I was not aware humans consider sexual tension amusing when they are immediately privy to it."

He pulled his face in close to hers again, "If it wasn't, I don't think I coulda made it through the first tour'a duty with you, baby."

He gave her a quick peck on the nose then rolling from his side abruptly stood up. "We got anythin' to eat that's proper human food in the kitchen? I'm starved."

She regained her composure and spoke with an adequately Vulcan sensibility, "Yes, I made sure that we were adequately stocked for your return. Based on the stressors you have encountered lately I believed it was prudent to begin acclimating you to a vegan diet."

Trip had already made his way towards the kitchen and stopped dead in his tracks, whirling to stare at her with an expression that was equally alarmed and irritated, it positively screamed, as did his mind, _This is gonna be a problem_.

She still sat on the floor, stolid at stone, but then her right eyebrow began a slow creep upward.

"Damn...you really had me goin' there a second...again!" He threw his hands in the air, "You're gettin' _way_ to good at this, darlin'...one of these days I'm not gonna realize you're kiddin'."

"Excellent, my technique is improving."

Trip stood still a moment, contemplating something that had nothing to do with his stomach, intimate relations with his wife, or bonding with his son. His mind was on the revelation, what it meant now that he was having his own doubts about resigning. Events had done more to make him wonder if leaving the MCS Navy was, indeed, the best thing for the universe as a whole. It certainly wouldn't be the best thing for Earth and as long as they lived here, it wasn't the best thing for his family either. He wasn't going to be able to just slip away, not knowing what he did now anyway. It would be irresponsible, immature, hell...immoral.

"Do we have stuff to make a san'wich?"

T'Pol nodded, "Yes, k'diwa."

"Would you mind gettin' it out for me? I'm gonna call Admiral Black."

She arched a brow at him.

"If I tell 'em that I'm not gonna resign now, they might authorize me some extension leave." He grinned at her. "Then maybe we can send Solan to see my folks fer'a couple'a days and we can have the house to ourselves."

T'Pol rose quickly but with enough hint of dignity to avoid seeming overly eager. "The domestic communicator in your office should still have his comm address saved."

* * *

><p>Solan eyed his father's meal at eye level across the table. His memories of father had been vague...sort of like dreams that seemed indistinct at times, he knew the face but didn't remember it. All he could seem to remember was how huge he was...giant, head reaching to the clouds and feet that could shake the earth. Hands...hands the size of worlds that would tenderly embrace and offered succor and safety. Hard and knobby, often smelling of strange and foul things...like metal and dirt and smoke. Know his bigness seemed less indistinct and amorphous.<p>

Solan knew he was bigger, he could use mother as a measure, a metric by which to chart his own growth. The Sehlat was also bigger, much bigger than he remembered, but still, father seemed like a cyclopean pillar even if his head didn't seem quite as in the sky, his feet didn't sound like falling mountains, and his hands weren't so all enveloping.

Certainly he was much bigger than mother, but now, for the first time, he really began to understand the nature of his difference in size. Father's arms were hugely thick, almost three times that of mother's. He had hair on his arms, legs, and chest, unlike mother's arms and legs and what he could remember of her chest which was very vague. Father's chest and stomach also had hard knots that gave ever so slightly to touch but seemed to just further the impression that he was immense and powerful. He had three strange pink marks on his body, one on his side wrapping around to the small of his back, another across his back, and a third smaller one across his chest and collar bone.

He decided that father was huge and strong because he, like the Sehlat that was also huge and strong, ate meat...something mother rarely let him do.

"Hey buddy, hungry?" Father's voice snatched Solan's eyes to look at the big smiling face.

He shook his head. He was not in point of fact, hungry and it would make no sense to assert otherwise. "No."

"Wanna taste it anyway?" Father asked, holding a quarter of layered congress of cured meats, raw vegetables, and bread in his hand.

Solan smiled because he somehow knew the offer was a sign that father loved and cared for him. "ku-kay"

The huge hand set the piece of food down on the plate then after a cursory wiping on the napkin next to him, he pat his thigh, "C'mon round here."

Solan did as father bade, working his way around the table, hands clinging to the wooden edge as he walked along the parallel line of tiles, making sure to touch each one as he came. Before he even realized it the big powerful hands clamped under his arms and effortlessly lifted him in the air, his backside coming to rest on the unnecessarily huge expanse of father's lap.

He watched quietly as the same big hands took up a piece of the entree, tearing off a side and bringing it to his tiny mouth to taste.

"See this stuff here?" The finger pointed to the strange and mildly acidic smelling yellowy brown substance spread on one side of the bread. "This is kinda sour, let me know if you don't like it, okay buddy?"

Solan felt his cheeks suck inward almost instinctively where the strange smelling stuff spread on the bread touched his tongue. The sensation was strange, almost unpleasant in it's own right, and his head recoiled back reflexively as his lips puckered. Father's big hand came up to stroke the top of his head softly, reassuringly.

"Awww...lil' too much for ya' buddy?"

Solan shook his head, not knowing why, but finding he kind of enjoyed the sensation despite the utterly contradictory reaction from his body. "No. More, pwease."

"Ya' like it, huh?" He brought the morsel back up to his mouth and this time Solan bit into it, teeth shearing through the bread, greens, onion, and salty slices of cured flesh. Everything seemed sour, biting, vivid...yes, vivid, alive and vibrant...real...it felt like father's emotions only in sapid form. The tingle in his mouth began suddenly then became hot, he felt a flush in his face and an itch inside his nose. It was the strangest thing he had ever felt in his life, and he felt a moment of alarm when tears began to involuntarily fill his eyes.

"Awwww dammit! I'm sorry, kiddo! I shoulda' removed the peppers!"

Father set the slice down and immediately brought a napkin up to his tiny mouth, "Go ahead and spit it out."

Solan shook his head, letting out a little baffled cry. The immediacy of the sensation was startling, for a moment his mind could only focus on the cascade of neural input coming from what had happened in his mouth. He felt his heart pound in his chest, he felt the heat begin to spread through his entire body, his breath became labored and quick, hair stood on end, ears burned...it was...fascinating. Alive...he suddenly understood what being alive meant. Being alive meant experiencing things that took over your entire body; that clouded the mind with their immediate prominence. He felt a surge of joy at it and squealed happily.

A glass of water came up to his mouth, clutched in father's powerful left hand but Solan refused it...pushing it away. Water was cold, soothing, it was like what he felt from mother most of the time...but he didn't want that, he wanted this fire, this burn, this sensation of vibrant struggle. There was plenty of time available to mimic the cold water from mother, right now he wanted father's teasing, tickling, burn.

"Are you alright, sweetie?" Father's voice asked as he felt the big hand slide the hair back from his burning, tingling forehead.

"More!" Solan squealed with glee.

Father's deep chuckle shook him, "You're gonna spoil yer appetite, tiger. But I guess it couldn' hurt much."

"You allowed him to consume a jalapeno?" Mother sounded displeased.

"It was an accident, darlin', but seems like he liked it."

Mother crossed to where they sat, her own hand running fingers into father's hair just as his big fingers ran into Solan's silky hair where he sat on the big lap. Solan could feel something warm from mother, touching against him but focused almost like a beam at father; his presence was like the pepper and it was making mother warm. It was a wonderful feeling; father's unvarnished affection, the warmth from mother, the existing sensations of the pepper still biting at his tongue and cheeks. Solan turned and craned upwards, wrapping his arms around father's big neck like he did the sehlat.

He could feel more than see father's grin, looking back up at mother with a kind of blissful expression that always made the warmth from mother become momentarily hot. "If he likes this that much I bet he'll go nuts for some fried catfish."

"I think it is the company that he prefers, k'diwa."

Father's voice softened, "You know...I guess I never honestly believed it...this...would happen. I 'spose I always sorta believed it'd never be me."

Solan could hear the voices...mother's to father, father's to mother...the speaking without words, their mouths unmoving. The first sounds he remembered, strange and indistinct, somehow in some strange way he knew it was from before his birth. He could hardly reconcile the concept, but he knew it was true. He couldn't hear the words, could barely hear the actual voices; he just knew it was happening, like hearing voices through walls or underwater. When they spoke like this he could feel strange stirring in him, like he was privy to something private he should not hear. It was like this sometimes at night, always in his sleep he could just make it out, he could somehow feel mother touching father, father touching mother, there were other sensations he didn't understand and could not describe or define. They had stopped altogether when father left and he sometimes felt an ache from mother, a low and dull pain that would not go away.

"Touch momma."

Father complied, reaching up to mother who brought her own hand to meet his, their index, middle, and thumb touching together. Solan could immediately perceive the spike of warmth emanating from Mother, matched in intensity by Father's which seemed to cool slightly by comparison of his normal heat. For a moment it was almost as if all three were in perfect sync, minds rolling in the passive comfort of perfect simpatico.

Warm slowly became hot…

Hot quickly became burning…

Solan felt a churn in his tiny stomach, a slight discomfort that made him believe that perhaps he was experiencing something he shouldn't be. He could almost feel Father's heart thundering in his chest, could feel the strange heat just below mother's stomach. Tiny hairs on Solan's arms, almost too small to see, too small to feel stood on end, this was something he wasn't meant to be part of and somehow he knew that it had been a moment much like this that had given rise to his creation. He let out a small confused sound, snatching the drowning focus between mother and father back to immediacy and their fingers fell away from one another's.

"Well…" Father said, swallowing slightly, fresh beads of sweat on his forehead, "I guess whatever they dosed us with on Tirpitz wears off kinda quick when we get back to the world."

Solan wasn't particularly sleepy, but he could feel deep inside that he needed to take a nap, to remove himself from his parents' immediate concern. Upon contemplating it, he realized he was still a bit tired from the excitement of the day and a good long sleep would be beneficial. Father tended to rise early, and if he went to sleep now he would be able to wake up in time to spend the early morning with Father and watch the sun rise out across the water as he had on a few occasions before. He was certain that sleep would swiftly overtake him, quickly beguile him into the strange crepuscular perception of what happened between mother and father when they weren't trying to keep each other out of their minds. Sometimes in moments like that it reached a point where he couldn't tell where mother ended and father began and in those moments he could feel a completely different sensation that was at once the most uncomfortable and most soothing thing he had ever felt build and build and build until for a moment he knew what it must feel like to die then pop like a bubble running outwards and away. He could somehow sense that would happen soon, that it needed to happen and it would not happen until mother and father believed he was asleep in the comfort of his crib.

"Wanna take a nap." Solan declared evenly, causing mother and father to break eye contact with one another.

"That right, sport?"

He nodded at his father, "Uh huh."

"Alright then," his father hoisted him to his shoulder and rose from the chair, "Wanna sleep in your crib or with teeth?"

"Cwib pwease." He declared flatly as he felt his eyelids begin to grow heavy as he mentally willed himself to begin preparing to sleep. Over his father's shoulder he saw mother taking the plate from off the table and putting it into the refrigerator to preserve the food contained there-on. It indicated that father would not be going back to it soon, which probably meant that mother knew that she and father were going to get a chance to make the bubble again and he could feel that it made her happy, which made him happy.

* * *

><p>"It's too damn early for this kind of crap."<p>

A.G. Robinson cut eyes over at Admiral Gardner and smirked, the older man was nursing a durafoam cup of coffee as the sun crept over the hills of the San Francisco Headquarters complex. His day had begun five hours earlier in Rio with some gorgeous little thing whose name he couldn't remember still draped part way across him and room service knocking on the door to his room with fresh ground and brewed coffee. The briefing was to be informal, little more than a formality some of the admirals had put together to discuss impending deployment information before he went back to his extension leave. He was taking the whole month, two weeks extension then another two weeks of vacation time that had accrued to truly epic size since his taking the reins of Task Group: Deguello. The _Deguello_ itself was still undergoing retrofits, would be for another three weeks at least, but he was sure that was no longer germane to his summons to the morning meeting. Tucker had put back in with the _Tirpitz_ yesterday morning and A.G. was relatively certain he would be getting orders cut to take command of the ship once all repairs, rearmament, retrofits, and re-stationing was complete.

When they entered the conference room, Admirals Black, Forrest, Sanderson, and General Lester were already present along with multiple non-flag administrative level poobahs whose name he did not care to remember, nor did he honestly need too.

"So, when do I get Tirpitz?" A.G. crowed before taking a seat.

"Tucker and his crew are on five days R and R," Sanderson countered, "we have his preliminary report on the shake down but we are not going to proceed with anything in regards to performance appraisal and response until after we've debriefed him."

"I'm going to want to staff it how I see fit." A.G. declared, leaning back in the comfortable adjustable chair. He could sense this was just the beginning, they would probably be pinning a star on him soon, it just made sense that they would be putting an admiral on a battlewagon like The T, as it was already being called among some sections of the navy.

"Nassir Al-Sistani is a good XO; aggressive, smart, good mix of judicious and crazy…it would be a shame to pull him off Tirpitz." Gardner argued.

"So we can stick him on the DeGuello and maybe in a year or two give him his own boat to command." Robinson replied flippantly. He had his own staff of officers, his own stable to pull from in order to staff and run the ship the way _he_ wanted. No egg-head like Tucker could have possibly run the ship the way it was meant to be. Al-Sistani likely existed to offset Tucker's inherent incompetence.

"He had command of his own boat…he was a task group commander on the Detroit before we promoted him to Tirpitz." Black replied with clear disdain.

The doors swung open again and A.G. saw the admirals and general opposite him lift their eyes to see who had entered the room. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a smirk begin to spread across Black's face and General Lester grinned openly. A.G. turned to see Tucker in woodland NWUs, sleeves on the blouse rolled up above his elbows and certification badges neatly arranged on the jacket's breast. He almost looked more like a Marine than a Naval Officer with trousers tucked meticulously into the black boots, bloused perfectly at the top of the boot and blouse jacket cinched around his waist with gun belt. He held the eight point soft cover in his left hand as he snapped his heals together and saluted.

"Cap'n Charles Tucker reportin' as ordered."

Black allowed the smirk to spread, "Morning, Trip."

General Lester nodded, "Captain."

Tucker returned the nod, "Sir."

"How'd the Marines work out for you out there?"

"Havin' that many swingin' dicks in quarters that tight for that long seems like a gaff-up in waitin', sir. You sure you can't give me a few pogues to thin the numbers?" Tucker grinned.

Lester guffawed.

"So, captain…in regards to your pending request?" Black lilted the question leadingly.

"I imagine y'all could probably find somethin' to keep me busy with for a while longer." Tucker replied, stonily.

Black nodded, lifting a small sheaf of papers and tore it in half in a smooth almost elegant gesture then set it down on the table.

"Back to the think tanks, huh?" Robinson quipped, "Don't feel bad, Tucker, not everyone can cut it in the big chair."

"Were there any posting recommendations you wanted to make, captain?" Black inquired, lifting a PADD.

"No sir, I would request that my current XO remain in his post if he is not imminently being considered for promotion. However, if he is being considered for captaincy I have to give my enthusiastic recommendation. I would also request that the current marine detachment and commander remain in place, those boys work well with Tirpitz and her crew and I can't imagine a better special operations detachment for us. However I do believe we should increase available personnel by twelve percent." Tucker replied, then paused, biting his lip before straightening a bit more, "I have one other request, sir."

"And that is?" Forrest inquired.

"About to ask for a pony?" Robinson mumbled sarcastically, garnering a glare from Gardner.

"My wife…as a Vulcan…will experience a certain species related medical issue-"

Black held up a hand calling for him to stop, "I've been apprised of the situation, we're already a step ahead of you." Black tapped his nose, eying Tucker who seemed to visibly relax.

"Thank you sir, that is all I have to say on that matter, I am ready to resume my post at your command."

"Splendid. Based on your recommendations Tirpitz will be ready to put back to sea in three weeks, consider yourself on leave until then, captain." Black replied.

Robinson sat up straighter, "Wait…what?"

"I beg your pardon, captain Robinson?" Black shot back curtly.

"Tucker is taking the _Tirpitz_?"

"That is correct."

A.G. felt his face go red, "Why the hell are you sticking some lab jockey like him on there? That boat should be mine! I'm the one who's been sitting on the Klink boarder for the last two years! I'm the one holding them at bay!"

Sanderson growled a retort, "Stow that crap! Pull your head out of your ass Robinson, you're out there so if the Klingons do try something you can go flatten Qo'nos, but we don't need that anymore. Tirpitz led a light task group into the heart of Romulan territory, took the fight to the enemy and crippled their war making capacity. If we need to hurt the Klingons it'll be Iowa class boats that do it and we need smart commanders without an ego leading them."

"What?" A.G. choked.

"You're a pain in the ass, Robinson…half the other skippers in the task group hate your guts and the rest and too hen-pecked to ever admit it. Why do you think we have to keep rotating ships in and out of the task group?"

Robinson looked back at Tucker, hoping to see him grinning or something to give him a reason to belt the punk but instead just saw and expression of quiet disdain. Tucker…with his parachutist badge, his command ashore, EOD, Combat action, and Naval Special Warfare badges, everything that Archer said came flooding back. Robinson was the pogue, Tucker was the hard-ass…the complete package. There wasn't a place in this man's navy where Tucker wasn't perfectly suited to fit in. He designed the boats, came up with the retrofit plans that made them work better and, in this case, lead them to place an ass-kick on their enemies. He felt crestfallen, defeated…all he could do now was sneak back to Rio then off to Jamaica and Puerto Rico where he could drown himself in booze and women and try to forget the fact that he was now, in effect, obsolete and all he could look forward to was being promoted to a desk since he didn't have the diplomatic acumen to be Archer.

The up side was that there was only one Iowa class ship right now, and perhaps, if he was lucky, they would hand him the second since there was still a need for big task groups. But by the same measure, he could find himself as the underling, doing the fetch and carry while some Admiral like Carter, Yost, Gottel, or Nguyen gave orders from on high in their battleship. He wasn't sure he could live with that, but if it was what it took to beat archer to that first star, he would deal with it.

* * *

><p><strong>[Author's Note] <strong>

**Blouse means Jacket for those who think that Trip is wearing a woman's shirt.**

**Also...happy birthday Jonathan (not Archer).**


	42. Chapter 42

"How much would it cost for us to get a p-keck in every boat we have?" Admiral Forrest inquired as he lazily tapped a pen on the top of the conference table.

"Are we talking phased upgrade or under-way expedient solution?" Black grumbled, eyeing, too closely, the offending writing tool as it let out a rattle patter against the laminate clear surface.

"Phased?"

"Twenty eight million a unit." Sanderson declared, glancing from a PADD back to the discolored coffe-ring stain in the bottom of his mug, looking for some momentary distraction from the malaise that had overtaken the conference room.

Things had changed; draw down from a conflict, gear up for the next. It was on the horizon to be certain, the move on the part of the Klingons hadn't been random, it was a power grab, hegemonic expansion, and MCS drew first blood this time around. Unofficial channels had made assurances that Colonel Khorr's attempt at annexation had not been endorsed by the Empire, how much of it was true was hard to say as it was entirely possible that Qo'nos was doing whatever it could to keep the Deguello task group on their side of the border in a scramble to ensure continuity of national sovereignty. Khorr couldn't be punished, he was, conveniently, already dead at the hands of one of their own. The transition talks seemed to be going peacefully, the Klinks pulled all their ships out, provided diplomatic hostages to the Kriosians, and jumped well far enough away that when the three destroyer, two frigate patrol came through, there weren't any Klingon ships within 15 parsecs.

And of course there was Tirpitz…

The dread the ship seemed to be producing was palpable. Tellar and Rigel had "politely" requested that the ship not enter or come near their territorial "waters" likely out of fear that once in place it could be used to quickly and effectively annex their territory. Andoria, on the other hand, was demanding one of the ships for their own Imperial Guard, representatives of their government positively salivating over the bright shiny new killing machine. Vulcan has made less overt overtures requesting an exchange program allowing Vulcan personnel billets on the next ships in the production series as part of a cross-training and military exchange program. Their argument was hard to dismiss, Vulcan commandos would train with MCS Marines and their ship personnel would receive an understanding of MCS Naval Officer and Enlisted Doctrine.

President Kingston and secretary of state Doyle had rebuffed the Andorian demands quite adamantly, a move that had led some to fear that Andoria would walk away from the table and had still others guessing that the move was intended to test human resolve. If Andoria could bully Earth, then Earth wasn't an ally worth having to the pugilistic and meritocratic Andorians. They had seemed more impressed with being told flat out "There is no way we are giving you a star ship" than they were by previous functionaries telling them that humanity was "sure they could work something out." Good will was definitely being fostered among the people of Rigel, Tellar, and Andoria even as dignitaries, bureaucrats, and majordomos rattled sabers and pounded desks. New paint and some bailing wire was holding _Enterprise_ together, the ship was not war-worthy, but as the valiant grand-dame of the MCS fleet she acted as the perfect symbol of Earth's good will towards its neighbors. Archer was a consummate diplomat; reverent, respectful, but only to a point. He would not allow himself or Earth to be walked on, and had on more than one occasion engaged in acts that were down-right insulting to various dignitaries. It was his frankness of character that had impressed after the initial outrage. Many dignitaries had never been treated with anything but the utmost of deference, but when Archer decided where the ration of bull shit ended, they were shocked and humbled. In the end, it was this strength of character they came to respect. Human brashness was seen as novel, unique, even desirable by the extant races who had been dealing with one another in some capacity or another for hundreds of years; Earth, as the relative new-comer having sprung onto the galactic scene in a limited capacity only a little more than 100 years ago, still had the new-car-smell and as such fascinated the common folk of the Coalition races.

"What's the status on Iowa, Royal Oak, and Missouri?" Gardner inquired, shifting the conversation away from the old and into the new.

A month ago he'd co-opted Black and dragged him to an old back-alley bar he had frequented during his days as a young Lieutenant Commander. He had apologized about his opposition to the Iowa design, told Black that he had indeed been right all along and pledged to help him get the other phased replacement designs pushed through. Public opinion was with MCS right now, humanity loved a good, clear-cut, righteous cause. The attack on Vulcan, the unprovoked aggression by the Romulans had been cast in a new light over recent months. Vulcan was talking, still staid and reserved in what they would say, but they had laid some of their cultural history bare for the universe to see. Igor Yegerov's film had become a late-breaking sensation. It stoked racial pride in humanity of the best kind. Not egotism, not ethnocentrism, but a kind of understanding that this was our niche, this is what we were good for, this is why we made the galaxy a better place. Our fearlessness, our ethos of sacrifice, our willingness to die for our neighbor is what we exemplified and what had been sorely lacking in the immediate galactic community.

"We're nearing thirty five percent completion on Iowa and Royal Oak, Missouri is sitting around seventeen percent completion. We estimate they should be ready for sea trials inside two years at this point." Sanderson declared. He had been handed oversight a week ago and was taking the role seriously, shuttling back and forth to LaGrange 2 almost daily.

"I think it might be time to start deciding what we can do about getting the Triumph class put in place before we burn too much more capital on the CGs." Black declared, understanding the subtle prompt from Gardner.

"Greg, we've got three Iowa boats being built, why are we going to start a whole new line of experimental ships this soon?" Forrest inquired, still tapping the pen on the table.

"We've got five CGs that are going to be coming out of the slips within the year but the remaining nine we had slated for production within the next two years haven't even had their keel laid in. The funds are there, if we can divert it we could probably start on our first Triumph class boat as soon as Iowa and the Oak slip their moorings. If we can get solid results, we can kill further production on the CGs and focus on Triumph and Revenge class boats to start updating our fleet. By the time we've got replacements for all the CGs, they'll be ready to end their blue-water career anyway and we'll just sortie them back to littoral tasking without a hiccup in transition." Black replied, his voice uncharacteristically lacking in animation.

"God, Greg, you sure do love burning through the appropriations." Forrest admonished with a chuckle.

Black shrugged, leaning back in his chair, "Use it or lose it."

"Black's right, one Triumph and four CGs could do everything we've got twenty two ships doing out there with the Deguello." Gardner countered, his voice doing little to animate the lazy tone of the meeting.

"Alright, that's a good point, but what do we do with eighteen million tons of decommissioned ships?" Forrest posited; the ultimate white-elephant in the room.

"Well…" Black took a deep breath, this would probably be the sticking point, "There's always the Saxon class."

Sanderson straightened in his chair, "Are you serious? Three new classes being pushed inside a ten years window? That's just loony, Greg! C'mon!"

"Not so crazy," Admiral Nguyen interjected. He rarely attended these types of meetings. He still had his sea-legs and usually commanded from the CIC of a ship out on patrol. Staff level concerns typically only involved operations of given task groups and flotillas, but he had been quietly but consistently grousing for some time that their fleet needed to catch up with their technology level, "Most of the existing CG class boats can be gutted and refit into the Saxon Frigates, it'll cut materials costs by about half and labor by a fourth. No junk to clog up bone yards, no expensive demilitarization process, and just about all the material ends up recycled."

Black nodded, "Saxon was the first thing to pop out of Tucker's head when he was designing Iowa, he was trying to figure out a process that would let us use everything we had done on the CGs up to that point be used in the design. He didn't come up with the ground-up design for Tirpitz until I told him to go nuts with the design."

Forrest furrowed his brow, "How long are we talking?"

"Probably a year to eighteen months per boat, depends on how much appropriations will allow as to how many can be done concurrently." Black replied.

"But that means the CGs basically get a new lease on life?" Sanderson threw his hat into the conversation.

"That's right, we all know how much the civilian government hates waste, they'll throw money at a project until their wrists go limp if they think there is anything sustainable about it." The rumbling basso of Lieutenant General Johnson interjected, prompting a nod from General Lester. The two Marine officers typically had little to say in these sorts of conversations, but along with naval appropriations came more appropriations for the Marines who were expected to serve aboard the ships as well.

"Well, hot damn…do we already have a research committee convened to run the numbers on this?" Forrest inquired.

"Thanks for volunteering, Max." Black grinned, "Now, do we have another order of business or can we all get some coffee, you guys make me feel like I need a nap."

* * *

><p>"Humans? I had thought we would not see their kind again." Kuhrd grumbled, cutting eyes over to Duras who had something of a haunted look in his eye.<p>

"It is likely we would not have had Khorr not been a fool."

Kuhrd took a step in front of the man who could not call other than a friend, halting their progress to the Capitol Building and Chancellor's Council. "You fear them?"

"We should." Duras replied, his candor unexpected. "War is not a game to them, there is no glory for them, just duty. They fight to triumph, not to gain accolades or recognition like we do."

"We don't just fight to honor ourselves; we do it to honor our house and the empire." Kuhrd protested evenly. Duras' revelation was shocking, but he could accept the genuine nature in which it was made.

"Kuhrd, you were spared the shame of losing to them those years ago. By the same measure you didn't see _how_ they fight. They are disciplined barbarians, regimented savages. Their courage seems to hold no bounds as does their capacity for brutality. They do not posture, everything they do is a promise, if they move troops to your position, they _will_ overrun it, if they see an objective, they will take it." Duras folded his arms across his chest, looking down at his boots, "They plan everything with the utmost precision then do the utterly unexpected…with the utmost precision. They make up the rules of the battle as they go, but always, everything is done like a perfectly functioning machine."

Kuhrd pursed his mouth into a contemplative frown, "Perhaps we just let the wrong warriors lead."

Duras let out a single bitter chuckle, "We did at that, we let fools who would make war on an enemy we didn't understand lead. If the right warriors had been left to lead, we never would have fought them in the first place."

"Where is the glory in that?"

"Glory profits a dead failure, nothing." Duras replied with a kind of grizzled candor that should have only been possessed of a warrior twenty years his senior, "The houses that sought to fight the humans have been all but gutted, if not for the order from the Chancellor they would have been gobbled up by their rivals by now, they spent themselves on foolish adventurism and in a few years, they will be nothing. Mark my words, as soon as the Chancellors ban on vendettas between those houses and their potential enemies is lifted, they will be destroyed outright and those who are folded into their conquerors will forever damn the name of those that put them in that state."

"The humans." Kuhrd fired back with barely varnished amusement.

"Blame the symptoms, not the disease."

"But your house is still strong, Duras, and growing stronger by the day."

"That won't last if what I think is coming, is, indeed, coming."

Kuhrd furrowed his brow, "What? What is coming?"

"War."

"That is a little drastic." Kuhrd chuckled, something he rarely did outside the company of immediate family. Duras had become something of an alarmist ever since the failed foray into human space years before. It wasn't as though the son of Toral had lost all stomach for a fight, but when it came to humans…

"Why do you think we sought this alliance with the qarDaSngan?"

Kuhrd's face seemed to drop, "I thought it was for trade and technological exchange…"

"Exclusively?"

"You mean, your father…"

"No," Duras shook his head adamantly, "my father is more interested on competing with our rivals on the stage of economics and politics with a powerful military to protect our interests, expansion through conquest will bleed us dry…but once an alliance is solidified…"

The taller more powerfully built son of Lo'wahl nodded, Duras' insight was correct. As soon as relations were opened with the qarDaSngan the war hawks would begin to pour the honeyed-words of conquest and expansion into the ear of the fiercely classicist aliens. "What do we do then?"

"Pray that cooler heads prevail. If there is one thing that is certain about the humans, they will steadfastly honor diplomacy even while it's cutting their throat."

* * *

><p>"What's on your mind, skipper?" Nassir stepped out onto the balcony, handing his commanding officer a glass of arak with water and ice. The clear liquor quickly took on a milky shade as the oils from the anise separated. To most it was off-putting, westerners and Europeans tended to expect their liquor to remain clear with tints of color depending on the spirit.<p>

"I thought druze weren' s'posed to drink." Tucker smirked at his XO.

"Some of us abandoned the old hadiths, there never was a clear answer one way or the other in the Qur'an." He took a sip of his own drink, "besides…I'm only human."

"Hell'uva hair to split."

Al-Sistani shrugged, "I think we probably earned a little respite, I am sure He will understand."

Tucker cocked his brows, leaning forward on the balcony with the drink cradled in his hands, nodding slowly, "Yeah, we have at that…"

"So, what has you so preoccupied, I know it couldn't have been my mom's Lahm b'ajeen."

Tucker straightened up, patting his stomach, "And the burek, man, that was great. I'm gonna have to sneak over more often when y'all are havin' dinner."

"Yeah, I've always been spoiled, ship food is always…" He held out his left hand, making a floating gesture from side to side.

"Yeah, tell me about it…on En'erprise we had'a chef, kind'a made me forget how bland the stuff usually is."

The door on the balcony opened and Nassir's father stepped out into the Iraq sunset, crossing over to the small table with a bowl of ice, pitcher of water, and the bottle of arak, quietly preparing himself a drink of the traditional spirit while the two officers spoke.

"So, seriously…what is on your mind Trip, you've been preoccupied all evening."

Tucker took a sip from the small glass and lowered it, "Guess I should tell you first since you're the only on that wasn't pressurin' me about my decision. I didn' resign my commission, I'm stayin' on as CO of the Tirpitz for the foreseeable."

"Alhamdulillah." Nassir quietly invoked.

"Allah akbar." The elder Al-Sistani supplied in benediction.

"Amen." Trip concluded.

Nassir grinned, his expression showing what could only be construed as relief. "Well, you made my day, skipper."

"Not ready for the big chair?" Tucker jibed as his executive officer.

"Not ready for A.G. Robinson to get the big chair." Nassir countered almost as a disclaimer.

"Honestly, not sure he's gonna be gettin' a bigger chair any time soon." Trip shrugged, remembering the episode in San Francisco.

"I should call my cousins, this is cause to celebrate!" The younger Iraqi crowed.

"Hold on now, keepin' the old boss usually isn' cause to throw a big shin-dig!" Trip protested with wry amusement on his face.

"What can I say, it makes me happy." Nassir shrugged.

"Well, as much as I'd love to stay for that, I'm thinkin' T'Pol might be havin' a bit'a the culture shock."

Nassir cocked a confused brow.

"I don' think your momma is too fond'a her."

The elder Al-Sistani let out a great bellowing laugh, prompting Trip to look over his shoulder as the grey haired Iraqi patriarch. The older man then launched into a string of Arabic looking between his son and his superior officer a grin still on his face as he spoke.

"He says that my mother thinks your wife is too skinny and isn't eating properly," Nassir supplied in a lull between the explanations of the elder Al-Sistani. "So she was concerned when she did not eat much at dinner."

"Oooh, okay, I can un'erstand that. Vulcans have a cultural prohibition against eatin' meat." Trip supplied.

"So T'Pol doesn't eat meat at all?" Nassir seemed confused as he had seen the Vulcan nibble gingerly at the lamb in the burek his mother had prepared.

"Well, when she got pregnant with Solan, Doctor Phlox on ener'prise told her that it was in the baby's best interest for her to ingest some animal protein, so she'll touch it, but I think she's kinda gun-shy about anything that isn' beef."

The elder man stepped closer, speaking up in broken English, mentally working on each word, "Do you have…picture of…your boy?"

Trip smiled, it was one area where he and Mr. Al-Sistani shared something in common. The older Iraqi man was clearly intensely proud of his children; Nassir, the valiant and skilled MCS officer, the first ranking naval officer to come from Tikrit in generations and an object of pride to the Iraqi people. Fatima, the eldest daughter who had taken up in the mantel of civil engineer, continuing the modernization and infrastructural development her father had pioneered to help the region recover from the lasting damage of the Eugenics war. Murhaud, the youngest son and middle most of the four children of Hama and Noora Al-Sistani, was currently attending medical school and developing into something of a stand-out among his peers. Then there was Sanaa, their teenage daughter on whom the couple clearly doted, she was flighty and idealistic but with the same head-strong drive that marked her four older siblings. She had expressed interest in joining MCS after attending college, following, somewhat, in the footsteps of her eldest brother but expressing a desire to study xenolinguistics and the electronic warfare and communications institute in Annapolis.

Tucker knew the joy one derived from one's offspring for even the simplest reasons and pulled out the AMOLED picture of Solan, recently updated to reflect the growth he had missed during the first deployment with the _Tirpitz_. Solan was sitting on the floor, holding a PADD with some basic child-instruction program teaching letters, numbers, colors, and shapes with "teeth" lying on his side curled part way around his human-Vulcan charge.

The elder Iraqi made a sound of perplexity, firing off a question to his son who replied patiently, "That is a Sehlat, it's a Vulcan animal."

Trip chuckled, "You should see the looks it gets from the neighbors."

* * *

><p>When Toral turned he felt as if he was looking back in time, the expanse of floor rolling back thirty five years to the day he met a young Lo'wahl in these very halls. Looking more carefully he could see the age on his friend's face, but the build, the towering height and broad chest and shoulders were still there, and the energy in his confident swagger had not changed one iota. This was a man secure in his position; not as the leader of a wealthy house, not as a political factor, but as a man devoted to his family and his craft. The confidence, plain for all to see but not put on display like a trophy almost formed a shield around him that no violence could penetrate. With two of his son's flanking him; the fierce Goral and young and striking Krapt, Lo'wahl seemed almost imperial, a lord with two prize war targs obeying just by power of his command. Both sons were of fantastic pedigree; Goral the aggressive commander who had become the terror of any criminal filth that wandered too close to their family borders and of course Krapt, the mystery of the family, a warrior through and through whose skill was only rivaled by the effectiveness of his affectation of being a dandy.<p>

Toral had grown fat and bent with a combination of opulence and responsibilities. Remembering the warrior that you once had been was always a bitter pill, to see the warrior you could have been, often even more bitter. So why then did Toral have the great affection he felt for Lo'wahl when this man was a stark reminder of all he could have been but never was? Of course, it had to be Lo'wahl's personality; never setting precondition or judging unfairly. Lo'wahl had always called Toral "my friend" and offered the hospitality of his home and house without ever asking in return. Lo'wahl had convinced Toral to allow his only son, Duras, to apprentice under one of his more experienced captains and alongside his eldest Kuhrd, whom Duras had come to consider a friend and confidant.

If only his wife had given him a daughter or two he would have wed them off to Lo'wahl's sons and sealed the pact between their families with blood. As it was, he had to rely on the fact that Lo'wahl's eldest considered Duras to be a brother in all but blood, to codify the relationship between the two houses.

"You appear well, Lo'wahl." Toral croaked as he approached arms wide for the embrace he knew would come.

The larger warrior did indeed embrace him, strong hands slapping him strongly on the back in a display of deep friendship, "You appear troubled, my friend, what bothers you?"

Toral grunted, shaking his head, "I fear the opportunity we created may be squandered."

Lo'wahl stepped back, his face open and showing sympathetic concern, "What portent?"

"Already there are those who want to use our new friendship with the qarDaSngan as pretext to military adventurism again." Toral spat, "Krios would have been annexed by force if that fool Khorr had been left to his own devices."

"It was wise to insist your son be involved, he turned a possible disaster into a political victory." Lo'wahl offered.

"He learned his temperance from your house and the politics from mine, it was fortunate that we were involved. Otherwise the humans may have already had their teeth at our throats."

Lo'wahl frowned deeply, "Surely they could not have stabbed into our territory."

"You have not heard of their new warships, then?" Toral inquired as they began to slowly walk through the great hall towards the grand dais. "Monstrous battle cruisers, any one of them a match for dozens of our ships."

"Perhaps, military alliance with the qarDaSngan would be in our interests then, as a check against human aggression."

Toral let out a bitter laugh, "The humans _aren't_ aggressive, they are reciprocal. If we are tractable with them, they would be so with us. If we could trade with them, provide them with raw materials their government hungers for we could be secure from their temper and they would almost assuredly turn a blind eye to what we did on our other borders. We could be prosperous and slake our aggression against the Orions, Xindi, and Romulans to keep ourselves honed."

"We might have burned that bridge eight years ago when we attacked their colonies."

"Possibly, but it is also possible that if we followed that other warrior tenant we could soften them towards us."

Lo'wahl chuckled, "Which tenant is that?"

"Contrition."

Ah yes, nothing showed more strength of a warrior's character than being able to loudly admit that they were wrong and accept the consequence without flinching.

"What do you think will occur?"

Toral shrugged under the heavy jacket of his station, "Several of the houses favor war, expansion, conquest, but our Chancellor is practical, he allowed the invasion almost a decade ago as a way to refresh the council and identify trouble makers. As it is now, any relations with the qarDaSngan will involve trade and mutual defense, but war drums are beating and our Chancellor is short on ways to insulate himself at this stage. Today's tempered response is tomorrow's strategic framework for all-out war."

Lo'wahl furrowed his brow, "You think that could occur?"

"Not with the current Chancellor, but men die…by one means or another."

"You think they could murder him?"

Toral shook his head, not out of disagreement but out of sad resignation, "Could is not in question, I just pray it is not a matter of _will_ they."

The taller patriarch nodded slowly, resolving to change the subject to something more pleasing, "So, does Duras have his eyes set on a wife?"

Toral chuckled, "He is a worrier, my boy, he does not give passing through to such things."

"My daughter does seem to have some fancy for him."

Toral let out a belly laugh, "She's what? Twenty now? Little more than a child, my friend."

"Twenty one, Duras is only twelve years her senior, and a fine Klingon. Did you not always say it was best to wait to establish yourself and find a young wife?" Lo'wahl smirked. "Duras commands four ships, and as dowry I would give him part of my passage corridor, one of his ships to patrol with Goral and Dhe'bekt and share in the spoils."

Toral smirked back at his friend, "Oh, and do your job for you?"

Lo'wahl shrugged, "It would free one of my ships to make the runs to the qarDaSngan and back, and of course, it would place one of your ships to receive their goods whole-sale."

Toral stroked his beard, tugging at it slightly, he could award Duras a fifth ship, and let it act as courier for the qarDaSngan goods coming from the long trade route, increasing the wealth and technology of his fleet. It was actually quite generous of Lo'wahl to offer. "Your daughter is indeed a beauty, I will see if we can kindle Duras' affections towards her. But could that not strain the relationship between my son and your Kuhrd? Theirs is a friendship that should not be stifled."

"I think Kuhrd would rather trust his sister's honor and care to no one else."

Toral turned fully to face the taller and stronger warrior, "I cannot make it a compact now, but it would, indeed, bring ease to my heart to have our families bound together like that."

"And it would ease mine to have her wed and not have to contend with my four sons screening her suitors. It is expensive to clean up after the bodies." Lo'wahl replied with a hearty laugh, sparking a great bellowing guffaw from Toral.

* * *

><p>Valek lifted the bin containing trash and dumped it into a bag, a menial task that was below his office and station. Yet he couldn't stop the small smile on his face that was growing into what threatened to be a grin. This simple act represented one thing: freedom. He was the enemy, yet he was allowed to walk freely about the base, fulfilling menial tasks without supervision or oversight because his enemy trusted him. Trust, to be trusted by the humans felt good; it meant respect, honor, everything he believed in to the core of his being.<p>

He enjoyed the freedom that was provided by the "out-processing" phase of their time at Joint Base Wehytan, they got to move around the camp freely, still with some oversight and mostly to do menial tasks, but they were outside the fences and walls; emptying trash bins, cleaning latrines…being useful. Most days it was among the Vulcans and Andorians and he could feel the subtle resentment from them, but it was still an improvement over the feeling of uselessness he had experienced as a prisoner. Funny, he was still a prisoner, but freedom was in sight now, just weeks away when the ships came to transport them to meet up with Romulan representatives that would conduct them back home.

Tonight was his first time to be in the human barracks complex and while the harshness they seemed to exhibit was still there; all the vestiges of discipline had seemed to roll off them alongside their uniforms. So this was how they unwound…Valek had wondered about it. Part of him wondered if they were not some semi-robotic killing machines that returned to pods for rest and repair. These humans seemed loud and brash, boisterous even. Near him a human spoke to another, he wasn't sure how, but he could feel that the human was referring to him. He still didn't understand their language but some of the words seemed familiar to ones he had heard them use before.

"Sahwm'wan ghit thh rahmu'lan a biir."

"Hoose'hi ahny'wei."

"Wan'ah Suratz encioz."

Loud music…or that's what it seemed to be, was emanating from the open common area, the reverberations almost palpable in the air the way it would be when being produced by live performers and not from replayed media. A cracking sound caught his attention then a hiss as a can was shoved close to his face. The smells of grains and alcohol emanating from inside the metallic struck him immediately, he was being offered liquor. He accepted the offered item, but before he could imbibe one of the humans made obvious protest.

"Rahm'yulahns're Vohlcahn, thai dawnt dre'hnk."

"At's a kulshural prohabb'ishun, nawt bi'yo'loshikal."

"Hu spiiks rahm'yulahn?"

"Wahr'his Barnez?"

"Ah'nntha druhmz."

Valek shrugged to himself, not sure what was expected of him, looking over to the human that had offered the beverage, noting the human held an identical can he gestured towards it with his head. The human nodded, mimicking the drinking gesture with his own can. Valek took that to be a sign it was acceptable to taste the liquid inside, reckoning it safe to do so by dint of the fact it was hard to tamper with a previously sealed container. Lifting it to his lips he took a sip of the contents, it was indeed alcoholic but weaker than his people's native brews. Still, the flavors were interesting, heavy on grain with aspects of sour and bitter in unique balance.

The congregation of humans parted for a moment as one of them made his way to the center of the room where the music was coming from. As the marines moved he saw Corporal Barnes sitting on a short stool behind a set of percussion instruments, his feet bouncing up and down at a quick pace working a set of peddles that struck the largest, deepest resonating drum while the sticks in his hands flew from brassy cymbals to the smaller drums arrayed around him. The other sounds produced were coming from some sort of string instruments, two identical in size with a third longer, all seeming to be connected to a power supply and utilizing metallic strings for magnetic registration. Three marines that Valek didn't have more than passing recognition of where manning these instruments with a human he knew to be from the Reaction and Pacification Unit acting as vocalist.

This was the first time he had seen Barnes in anything other than his duty uniform and was struck by how much bigger the human seemed without the jacket and duty trousers on. His positively huge arms were completely uncovered, revealing the tattooed near rows of human script on his upper arm. The arrangement of music was harsh to his ears, it sounded aggressive; guttural vocalizations spiking into roars then back to a growl coming from the lead vocalist while one of the stringed instrument players supplied lines that seemed more like singing. After a few minutes the performance was over and one of the humans approached Barnes who rose from the percussion array and approached. When the human reached him, Valek caught the full extent of the disparity of physique. Having only seen him manning his station in the watch tower, Valek had never managed to fully grasp exactly how big the corporal was. He seemed positively mammoth, nearly a head and a half taller than Valek and about fifty kilos heavier if he was a gram. He casually plucked the beverage from the Romulan's hand, lifting it upwards and tilting his head back to pour some into his mouth without making lip contact with the container then handed it back again.

"What's the story?" Barnes' Romulan was, predictably, perfectly pronounced but the vernacular was confusing.

"Story?"

"Why did they come get me?"

Valek shrugged.

"Kahn rahm'yulahnz dreehnk biir?"

Barnes looked back to Valek, "Is there any reason you can't drink alcohol?"

"Short of the part where I am still something of a prisoner…" Valek quipped with an arched brow.

Barnes shook his head with an amused but exasperated expression.

"Yehz hii cahn dreehnk biir, yu dahw'mazz." Barnes shot back at the other humans, eliciting chuckles from several of them.

"Should I not be having this?" Valek inquired of the human.

"Well, I'm not sure what your commander will say, but nobody here is going to say anything about it."

"So, I suppose I should tell you now that we've been making prison-brew in our barracks for the better part of eleven months now?" Valek offered, suspecting he had nothing to fear in making the revelation now.

Barnes' face twisted into a mask of obvious disgust, "You actually drink that?"

Valek shrugged again, suddenly feeling very small surrounded on all sides, as he was, by the hulking and insanely strong humans. "It does the job."

"Yeah, but…" Barnes shuddered, "doesn't it taste awful?"

"Doesn't most liquor?"

Barnes shook his head, "No, not at all, biir is good. So you'd better drink it or I will." He extended his finger at the can in Valek's hands.

"So that is what this is called by humans, 'biir'?"

Barnes nodded, prompting the Romulan to lift the can, "Thank you for the biir." Then, tilting it back he drained the contents in three healthy chugs prompting whistles and hoots from the humans.

Barnes stifled a smirk, "You're pretty good at the drinking thing, huh?"

"Aren't all soldiers?"

Barnes turned his head to speak back to the humans, his words prompting more hoots and laughter from his fellow marines who took the empty can and proffered another. Valek took the can, quickly determining how the opening tab worked on the container and cracking the seal at the pouring mouth lifted it to his lips taking a deep swig from the contents there-in.

"What are those marks on your arm?" Valek asked, point at Barnes. The bicep was almost as big around as a thigh, based on human strength profiles it was possible that Barnes could rip another being in half with his bare hands.

"Men from my platoon that died on Vulcan, Master Guns Reichauer and his section were all killed escorting the Vulcan High Command to Camp Kelly and the other four names are from guys who got it during the fighting." Barnes seemed nonchalant about it, his voice devoid of recrimination or even a hint of anger.

"I'm…sorry." Valek offered, unsure whether it was wise to do so.

"So am I, they were great guys, I miss them, but can't change that now." He paused a moment, "You going to drink that biir?"

Valek nodded, "What is this made from anyway?"

"Liquid bread."

"What?" Valek seemed startled by the assertion.

"It's basically just the same stuff we use to make bread. Some folks even say humans developed bread after the screwed up making biir."

Valek pondered that for a moment, then took another hearty swig, "I think I like it this way better."

Barnes almost grinned, "Congratulations, you just took your first step towards being human, Valek."

It was a shame he would be leaving in less than a month, because he was starting to think he would like this 'biir' that the humans consumed and he would never have time to learn how to make it. Harder still to handle was the fact that he knew now that he would never be able to adequately hate the humans, or even hold a grudge against them. It might take him the rest of his life to adequately explain it to the rest of his people, but he didn't feel any hate or anger in his heart and while the idea that he couldn't feel the rage at what they had done to him and his people gnawed at him, he felt more reassured at the fact that he, like Barnes, would go through the rest of his life without letting unrequited hatred consume him.

* * *

><p><strong>[Author's Note]<strong>

**Yay! Another transition chapter devoid of direction of actually significance to the direction of the story! Hopefully, though, this one might better put some of the "randomness" of including the sub-plot with the Klinks into context for the rest of the story.**


	43. Chapter 43

"Better get yer kicks in now, sport, 'fore to much longer yer gonna be to big t'do that."

Solan looked at his father with that look of patent indignity that seemed to suggest he knew exactly what had been said to him and he wasn't pleased by the stab of pedagogical reason. From his perch on the back of the sehlat he could divine no reason why the creature, which still seemed to be growing at a healthy rate, would be unable to convey him about the house, yard, or anywhere else with any problems what-so-ever. The creature itself seemed to be tolerantly amused at this new role of beast of burden just so long as his charge did not dig in his heels or pull at his ears.

The presence of the pack master was a welcome change; he indulged in providing the more savory morsels that the den mother seemed averse to presenting. The den mother subsisted like a grazing creature, food that was not suitable to her station or role, but the pack master partook of a diet that was far more conducive to his role as the apex being in the den. The pack master would spar and wrestle, providing an outlet that the den mother had neglected and being able to expend energy in such a way was blithely fulfilling. He had, of course, assumed the pack master would be comparatively weak like the den mother but was shocked and pleased to find that the erect-standing being could easily match him for strength. Of course he realized that this was play, the pack master was thusly displaying affection and that claw and tooth were forbidden from such exercise. It was regrettable that the pack master had no such adaptations as they would clearly make him a far more effective apex being, but raw strength easily sufficed as the patriarch could effortlessly lift him, bodily, from the ground and wrestle free of even his most concerted efforts to pin the less-furred creature.

The fact that the pack master showed such affection for him renewed his drive to provide aid and succor to the cub during the periods of his extended absence, it was almost a sacred trust that had been conveyed. Of course he needed no additional incentive to care for the cub, it was, after all, his perennial playmate and companion. He could count on little by way of attention from the den mother short of attending to his food and hygiene.

"Don't pull his hair, it'll hurt 'im, okay sport?"

"He my horsey." Solan declared, affirming his recognition of the role the sehlat was performing.

"A Vulcan horsey. You know what he is, right?" Trip replied, playing the rhetorical education-through-socialization game that parents did with their offspring.

"Horsey!"

"No, he's a sehlat." Trip admonished with a chuckle

"Don' sit on sehlat, sit onna horsey, dada." Solan scolded, seemingly mesmerized that his father couldn't grasp the concept.

"Do horsies have big teeth?"

"Yes!" The child retorted, again feeling a bit of pity for the parent who clearly did not seem to realize that horses did, indeed, have big teeth.

"Pointy ones like that?" Tucker pointed at the pronounced saber-canines jutting from the creature's upper jaw.

"Dis one does!"

Trip could almost feel the wave of condescension from his son's mind, or, more aptly, his son's mind broadcast through T'Pol's, her unique filter rendering it more like memorandum than a strongly worded message from the original sender. The sehlat decided to pre-empt any further recalcitrance on the part of his young rider by crossing over to where Trip sat on the floor and plopped down, disgorging the pseudo-equestrian into his father's lap. Solan looked from the smilidon back to his father with a faux-pout, seeming to understand the grand conspiracy that had been perpetrated against him.

"You be horsey."

Trip grinned at the little half-Vulcan visage, "Do I look like'a horsey to you?"

"You horsey now." It was not a demand, just a frank declaration. There was no attempt to give instruction as much as to simply delegate a role. It was almost as if the child was saying, _Look, moron, you took away the ride I had, so you're going to have to take over._

"I'm notta horsey, Imma sehlat, too!" Trip flipped his son over, laying him on the rug and faking a pounce, burying his face into the corn-silk hair and his tiny stomach in turn making loud snorting bite noises over his son's laughter and squeals.

T'Pol stepped into the sitting room, watching the pair rough housing as the sehlat rolled onto its side in anticipation of being co-opted into the play. She still felt a wash of warmth from the sun that had bathed her skin moments before, before it became impossible to concentrate on her meditation due to the activity in her mate and offspring's minds. Solan was lying on the floor still giggling and gasping for breath as Trip rolled back onto his back to look up at his wife.

The sehlat was the first to act, perhaps sensing some subtle cue in the air, it sprung to its feet, taking a half step over to nuzzle Solan with its large muzzle before taking a half hop then dashing out of the room. The child needed no other prompting from the creature, suspecting the game was afoot he sprung to his own unsteady feet then took off after the creature in one of their normal games of chase.

Trip gave T'Pol a good, long, once-over with his eyes. He couldn't tell if this new "immodesty" was just a logical approach to living on or near a beach or her being something of a tease, but he was pretty sure he liked it. Her bikini top of choice was green today, modest as bikinis went but still showing a lot more skin than he was used to seeing from her as part of her daily routine. The sarong sitting low on her hips matched in terms of referenced colors in the pattern, both setting off the deepening bronze in her skin and the lightening of her hair.

He smirked, "Bit cool today for sun bathin', isn' it darlin'?"

Cool, was a unique qualifier for the weather, it was easily 26 degrees Celsius outside with virtually no clouds in the sky, but for a Vulan whose body was ideally acclimated for a temperature in excess of 41 degrees, a day like this could seem downright chilly.

"It is adequately warm in the direct sunlight and the lack of breeze prevents any chilling effect."

And just like that…

"Ya know, just for a second you could let me enjoy how sexy you look."

"I am certain nothing in my speech pattern will affect your appreciation of my appearance."

He picked up that little hitch in her voice, the one that said; _I am not presenting at face value._ He could say with about 99% certainty he knew what it meant and she was just waiting for him to pick up his part of the ritual.

"Usually ya wait 'til after twelve o'clock for'a afternoon delight, darlin'."

"Your parents will be arriving shortly, correct?"

Trip grinned now, "That kinda pushes the whole quick part of a quickie, doe'n't it?"

"We shall simply wait until after they have picked up Solan, that should leave approximately three hours' time to attend to that matter before we have to arrive at the gathering." She crossed the room, heading for the hallway and the bedrooms.

"Goin' to change?"

"That would be counter-intuitive to our prescribed course of action, I am going to prepare for our activities once Solan has left with your parents."

God…damn…

Trip felt a jerk in his shorts reminding him of exactly how good a job she did at pushing his buttons. Even if he could stop thinking about it, it didn't help that she was thinking about it, and that just fed it right back to him. He tried to calm his mind, to focus his thoughts elsewhere rather than to focus on the fantastic anticipation but try as he might, he just couldn't purge his thoughts as he inadvertently drifted into her body consciousness and found the heat spike to a point he felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The dreaded sound of a car door closing snatched his attention. Damn, they were early…or maybe they weren't he wasn't sure now. He rose trying to will his body into giving him just a few minutes leeway to complete the transition of Solan into their care.

"Solan, c'mon buddy, grammy n' grampy are here."

His son came tearing into the foyer, the sehlat trotting behind and Trip made his way to the door, opening it just in time for his parents to make it onto the porch. His father noticed the strange way his shorts were hanging in the front almost instantly, cocking a brow at his son.

"Don't ask." Trip growled low.

"Where's T'Pol?" Elaine inquired of her son.

"Don't…ask…" Trip repeated.

"Bit early in the game to be starting on number two." Charles junior quipped, grinning devilishly at his son.

"Dad…."

The elder Tucker knelt down before his grandson, "What do you say, Tiger? Ready to go?"

Solan nodded, "Yeth'sir!"

Trip huffed, "How do you like that, he doesn't call me 'sir'."

"Well, then stay around more." Charles junior fired back as he picked up his grandson, heading for the car. "We'll see you two this evenin'…providing you have the energy left."

"Dad!" Trip growled, noticing his mother's deliberate attempt to avoid noticing anything about him from the waist down.

"Y'all come when you're good and ready." Elaine said evenly.

"I bet they will," Charles crowed.

"DAD!"

"Charlie Tucker!"

Trip re-entered the house frustrated and embarrassed, this was the kind of thing that happened to teenagers, a grown man should be able to control his body. It wasn't so much that he didn't want to be turned on, didn't want to be aroused by his wife, it was the fact that he couldn't control it, couldn't take that detached casual stance he had been able to in the past with every other woman ever. Lack of control, that was the problem; he had always called the shots, set the tone, set the mood. Some latent stab of male chauvinism needed to be the one to instigate, to set the pace. When it had been the pseudo-plak tau almost three years ago it hadn't mattered, they were both going on instinct, a need that presupposed any thought or power-plays on their part. Now…

"Do you not think it is preferable that they know you still feel this way for me?"

He didn't look away from the wall he was trying to burn a hole through with his eyes, "I thought what I felt didn't matter. Feelings are illogical."

"You are not logical, I prefer it that way."

He turned to see where she was standing down the darkened windowless hallway leading to their bedroom, the light coming in from the bay windows adjacent to the bed silhouetting her naked form.

"You know…you've gotta be the worst cheater in the world."

He could feel more than see T'Pol cock her brow at him, "Perhaps if you would engage in a bit more exhibitionism the score could be evened."

"Oh come on, you honestly think you'd like seein' me walkin' around in the altogether with this thing stickin' out in front like it was leadin' me around by the nose?" Trip gave his crotch a grab to emphasize the point.

"There are components of my anatomy that are 'sticking out' when suitably aroused."

"Bit different, darlin'." His tone was not one of endearing.

"I find the premise of you being 'led around', intriguing."

Trip paused, considering that for a moment, wondering if maybe he shouldn't give T'Pol a little eye candy every now and then too. The way and areas she touched during sex seemed to indicate there were parts of his anatomy she found pleasing, maybe she was visual about it too. "So why are we talkin' about this?"

"Because your utterly illogical human self-doubt requires that I assuage your ego." She made an exasperated sound…or maybe…not exasperated as much as… "I desire for you to attend to me."

"Oooooh…a Vulcan come'n'get me!" He crossed his arms, a modicum of control returning to him, "What do ya think is gonna happen with you gettin' me all revved up and ready to go like this? Can't last that long that way."

"You have never failed to provide far-beyond adequate performance in terms of duration and energy." She was definitely flustered; her voice left little to uncertainty.

"Oh, is that right? Maybe I should milk this for some more ego boostin'."

"Trip!" She barked, "Now!"

"Aye aye, ma'am."

* * *

><p>"Have you ever attended a Betazoid wedding, captain?" The Rigelian ambassador asked before returning his glass of ice tea to its place at exactly the 2 o'clock position of the plate containing his main course.<p>

"Can't say as I have." Archer replied. The Rigelian ambassador had a strange way about him, a sort of forced sophistication that staunched his actual personality.

"The Betazoids are empaths, they value complete openness, so as part of the marriage ritual they, and their guests are expected to witness the even completely nude."

"Oh come on, you've got to be pulling my leg." Archer chuckled.

"I didn't want to believe it at first either, but it is the truth. I was, fortunately, spared the…privilege…of attending one as a state functionary, but one of my colleagues informed me that it was a trying experience."

"Sounds like it must have been one hell of a task. So your people have good relations with the Betazoids?"

The ambassador cut away a small portion of his fish, taking a dainty bite that was either tempered by distaste for the meal or some diplomatic affectation. "They are, nominally, positive."

"Nominally?"

"A people who value complete openness can make for awkward allies; the concerns of state often don't make complete openness conducive."

Archer knew a fishing expedition when he heard it, "Is something concerning you, ambassador?"

"I wonder if humanity has been completely open with Rigel about its interests."

Yep…it was fishing, or maybe not so much fishing as trawling; this was really dragging the waters, seeing what could be stirred up. It was kind of a low blow, a side swipe of the diplomatic variety that he always had hated. If they didn't trust humans, why not just say so rather than engage in these baiting exercises? But then again, was it that easy to trust a group of people that came out of no-where and within a century had all but eclipses you? Was the martial face that Earth presented through MCS that trustworthy? At what point did the beneficent armored hand become a closed fist that decided how best to run everything and administer? Benevolent Tyrants could readily turn draconian when things did not go their way, the Augments had taught Earth that lesson all too well.

"What we want is simple, we want to be able to explore the stars, set up a few colonies, and get to know our neighbors." He answered honestly, frankly. This wasn't a prepared statement; no platitudes about cooperation, no sycophancy about learning from superior cultures, just the base-line core values of UEN that were outlined in informal and varied language during academy or OCS.

"In fairness, Captain, do those goals really require a military such as yours?"

"A long time ago, a Roman called Vegetius said 'si vis pacem para bellum'; if you want peace, prepare for war. Throughout our history the only sure-fire way to keep wars from breaking out was to make sure that you were far enough ahead of everyone else to ensure that if they did try to start a war they would lose, and lose badly. We saw what happened during the Eugenics wars when most of Earth decided the best way to keep any possible threats in check was through diplomacy, and we don't want to make that mistake again."

"So, Earth's threat of violence is directed as equally towards its allies as its enemies?"

Archer could see a potential philosophical mine field in that line of discourse, "Let's just say we're prepared for any threat and can put it down in the most efficient manner."

The ambassador nodded, "I may be an exception but I believe your peoples handling of the Romulans was admirable, captain."

"Even though it meant us utilizing a warship like Tirpitz?"

"Especially, because it meant utilizing a warship like the Tirpitz." The ambassador folded his hands together, "In short, your government applied an overwhelming level of force very, very precisely. The gutting of the Romulan war capacity in such precise raids meant they will not be able to produce an effective war making capacity for many years, yet, you stopped shy of the atrocious necessity of population thinning. They are left without recourse, but are still alive and, effectively, demoralized. The likelihood of Romulan insurgency of guerilla style wars is greatly diminished as they try to restore their military infrastructure and focus on securing their own territory. In short, you have killed their chance of escalation and, effectively, took away their will to do so."

"But you're still not comfortable with MCS warships operating in or around your territory." It was a statement, not a question.

"It is a matter of pride and prestige, captain. Would Earth want its territory patrolled by extant forces if those forces meant a reminder of how much powerful they were than you?"

Archer furrowed his brow, there was a point to that. "No, I don't suppose we would."

"There is also another factor to consider. What if a threat arose that compromised the entire sector, but your allies would not approach the threat as the degree of the threat dictated. Even if your perception of the threat was the most accurate, the potential exists that others would not view the threat in that way, what course of action would be the logical approach?"

Archer grimaced at the answer, "Effectively…annexation for your own good."

"How would you feel if the positions were reversed?"

"Mad…if it happened. And I suppose I would be worried that in a strategic framework the other power would have plans in place to do just that if the threat existed." Jonathan answered, still contemplating the ramifications.

"There are those on Rigel and Tellar that believe that MCS has plans of that nature in place and the placement of your warships in our territory would allow for the 'benign' annexation of our territory for our own good, should your government view the security of our sector was placed in significant jeopardy."

"So the real question, ambassador, is how do we assuage that concern and still have a framework to counter the threat?"

The ambassador leaned back in his chair, "There are those in the diplomatic circles that believe the best counter to that would be a unified organization that would serve as the framework for handling all but the most internal of sovereign national concerns."

Archer chuckled, "Yeah, we tried that a few times on Earth, this is about the closest we've ever been to getting it right and there are _still_ people on the outside looking in and the inside looking out that don't like it one bit."

"That will always be a matter of concern, but a few malcontents shouldn't hamper the progress of a people."

"The augments and their celebrants said something similar, ambassador." Archer countered with untempered frankness. This kind of language, this kind of thought pattern led to dangerous places, "Sacrificing people on the altar of progress has been a hallmark of tyrants for as long as there has been human history."

"But, captain Archer, what do you do when the threat is to everyone?"

Ah, the exercise of rhetoric; what was the greater good, did the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, at what price victory, what was the cost of freedom? No amount of idealism could stop a bullet, no amount of diplomacy could halt a falling axe blade, an appeal to reason couldn't stop a mad dog or a madman.

"What do you think we need, ambassador?"

"A unified structure to handle all of these issues, let nations governs themselves, within reason, but let all be equally involved and responsible for the concerns that affect us all. No appeal would go unanswered, no people left unprotected, no enemy of the one considered a non-enemy to the other."

"It's a nice ideal…but…"

"Sometimes a little idealism is just what is needed, Captain, we just need to make sure it is leveraged properly."

Archer held up his hands in a mock-warding gesture, "Oh no, I don't get into the politics, ambassador, I'm just a simple sailor, all that is above my pay grade."

The Rigelian smirked, "You have been discussing it, captain, have you not?"

"Discussions are one thing, doing the diplomatic arm-twisting is another thing entirely. I'm satisfied to just be providing the taxi service for the time being."

"So a career in politics is not on the horizon for you?"

"Not if I can help it."

* * *

><p>"Those are Surat's men."<p>

D'Vor looked over to the ranks of Romulans almost marching outside the wire heading to the cafeteria, they moved with almost military precision but with a total lack of concern in their gait. It was not the prisoner dining facility the approached but the one used by the Humans and Andorians at the joint base. They all had uncharacteristically short hair for Romulans, some heads shaved save for a patch on the top of their heads while others kept it almost stubble short on their entire head. It seemed to more mimic the Human military style than anything native to their people and it set them, obviously, apart from their brethren, as did the fact that they were no longer housed in the prisoner barracks.

"Why are they permitted to be outside the prisoner compound?" D'Vor asked, leaning into the crutches he still used to convey himself about, the pain from his injuries spiking for a moment then fading back into the dulled ache he had grown accustomed too.

Sub-lieutenant Lisser turned back to her subordinate, "There are some rumors in that regard. Some say that Surat and his men are favorites among the guards for betraying others of us inside the walls, some say it is because of their behavior and discipline, others insist it is because they are the first that will be going home. The latter assertion is tied in with the second."

"They were taken on Vulcan?"

"Yes, Surat and his cohort attacked the human base seven times and lived to tell the tale. It is why his men are so loyal to him. He also insisted they behave like soldiers, not prisoners, once they were inside the walls, because of that, the humans apparently respect them."

D'Vor leaned back against the wall of the laundry building, taking the crutches out from under his arms and sinking to the ground, the ache was worse than usual.

"Are you alright, should I get a guard to take you to the infirmary?" Lisser asked, her alarm apparent.

"The medication just doesn't seem to be working as well today." D'Vor replied in a pinched tone, indeed the pain was much worse today than normal, "I will be fine. How do you know so much about Surat and his men?"

"One of his Centurions, Valek, was responsible for seeing to the safety of me and the others taken by the human warship early after our arrival here. At first we believed we did not need the protection but we found out that night that we were not safe from our own kind inside these walls. Valek and his soldiers fought off our attackers when we were accosted."

D'Vor remembered little of his transfer to the facility two months earlier. He awoke on a human warship nine weeks ago to find that he was still alive. The last memory he had was of the pain and sensation of losing consciousness after the human Marine had shot him. The doctors on the human ships had saved him, but the damage had been severe, they briefly explained they were going to be putting him into a medically induced coma to allow time for recuperation; the wounds had cost him two feet of intestine and a fifth of his liver as well as damaging one of his kidneys and puncturing and collapsing a lung. It was something of a marvel that he had survived at all. The pain though…apparently the extent of the miracles the humans had been able to perform had ended where keeping him alive was concerned; the damage might take years to fully repair.

A human, tall and with an athletic build approached with one of the short haired Romulans. The human was over a head taller than the Romulan with the sleeves on his camouflaged jacket rolled up to show powerfully sinewed limbs. The human had an almost imperious air about him, like what one expected from an officer, he knew his station and let that aura radiate about him. He spoke to the Romulan who in turn spoke to D'Vor and Lisser.

"The captain would like to know if you are in need of medical attention." The Romulan translated, his own demeanor suggesting that he viewed his position as translator as something of almost military significance.

"My injuries are not life threatening, I am simply in more pain today than usual." D'Vor replied, not sure what to think of this obvious collaborator.

He turned his head back to the human officer, "Hii ez'n moahr pheyn tuudhey."

The captain nodded, saying something back to the Romulan translator then activating a communication device hanging near his collar, speaking into it in their strange clipped way humans spoke; violent and harsh sounding.

"The captain is calling for a stretcher, we will take you to the infirmary where they can give you better pain management."

Lisser scowled at the Romulan, "You are one of Surat's men?"

"I serve under sub-commander Surat, yes."

"It must be nice to be free while your comrades in arms sit imprisoned." She spat back.

"I assure you, we view our current plight with proper gravity, ma'am." The Romulan replied maintaining every vestige of his dignity.

The human spoke again, to his translator, point to the crutches as he did so. The translator nodded, taking the crutches while the officer bent down, hooking one of D'Vors arms around his neck as he effortlessly lifted the stricken Romulan into a cradled position and stood upright.

"What are you doing?" Lisser almost cried out, her composure slipping.

"The captain is going to take him to the infirmary now, he doesn't believe it is prudent to wait for a stretcher to be brought."

"Where are you taking him?"

"The infirmary!" the Translator fired back again, his patience slipping. The officer spoke again and the short-haired Romulan nodded, replying in the human tongue.

"Unn'der'stuud." with that he turned and dashed across the field towards the guard tower, shouting up at the massive human carrying the large weapon who manned the position regularly.

The human nodded and shouted out in Romulan at the yard through a sound amplification device, "All prisoners, hold your current position, the gate is opening, repeat, maintain your current position."

This was the second time humans had made off with her subordinate, the powerlessness to effect the outcome chewed at her. She hated this place, hated the humans, hated everything that had happened and that these barbarous monsters with their Vulcan and Andorian lackeys had done to her and her people. With any luck, the might of the Romulan empire would soon be brought to bear and punish them all. The rumors that the Humans had managed to gut their war machine were just lies and propaganda meant to demoralize the prisoners, it had to be. She just prayed that when the empire came to liberate the camp that the humans wouldn't have time to begin spite killings before they could be rescued.

* * *

><p>"The fact it took three days for this was highly illogical and disagreeable." T'Pol insisted.<p>

"No round, two?" Trip quipped back.

"I require water to replace lost fluids."

Trip chuckled, "That was inadvertently gross, darlin'."

She stepped out of the bed, standing looming over him, a hand on her hip in a defiant pose, "You also lost fluid."

"And gave 'em to you."

"I did not ingest those fluids, however, so we both need to replace fluids."

"Well…if you want t'ingest 'em next time…"

"Out…of the question…"

Trip chuckled again, this was his turn to have a little fun at her expense. "Y'know, I thought Vulcans were better at fluid management, bein' from a desert'n all."

She leaned in over him, "The kind of exertion I was just engaged in is not common for Vulcans."

"Is that right?"

She rolled her eyes, a hint of a smile tugging the corner of her mouth about a millimeter out of its normal alignment. "You are an exceptionally skilled lover who exceeds any possible expectation I could have. Is that adequately sufficient ego stroking?"

"So you don't mean it, huh?" Trip smirked.

"No, I am being completely honest."

"Well, go get that water, 'cause I'm gearin' up for round two."

T'Pol leaned back and away, "Do we have time for that?"

"Sure do, I'm gettin' a guy from Canaveral to site-to-site us over. They have to do a number of site-to-sites er'ry month as part of keepin' their certification up."

"So we have another hour and a half?"

"Two hours, baby."

T'Pol leaned back and away, again, almost smiling with her eyebrows, "It will take us at least 30 minutes to recover, and then we will need to shower."

"And that'd still have us showin' up right at about fourteen thirty and have us pretty much the first folks there." He paused, the lothario momentarily leaving the stage and leaving only Trip there to deliver his lines, "Darlin', I just want some more time with you, it's like there's a thousand things to take care of every day, it's people n' gatherin's n' God only knows what in the next few days. It kinda bothers me that the only way we can do that is gettin' physical. Don't you sometimes wish we could just, y'know, just be t'gether and not have to worry about anythin' else?"

T'Pol cocked a brow at her mate, "I do not think you require excessive sexual upkeep."

"That's not what I'm sayin', darlin'."

"K'diwa, we have plenty of time to spend with one another."

"I dunno," He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, "I just get this feelin' we're gonna get sortied real soon here, ahead'a schedule."

"Trip," She stepped closer to him, touching his arm softly, "in eight years you will be able to retire a pensioned twenty years serviceman that will give us the rest of our lives to be together in quiet times and loud. I know you feel there is a divide that is forming between you and I, but that is simply not the case. I fully contextualize the fact we may, in fact, engage in a higher relatively percentage of physicality during your liberty passes than would seem prudent, but make no mistake, I still view this time as highly fulfilling and cherished parts of our relationship."

He stood up, looked down at her from his greater height, a smile crossing his lips, "Baby, did you just admit to bein' a horn dog?"

She rolled her eyes, the mercurial way he could go from the open and emotionally delicate Charles Tucker to the self-assured and irreverent Trip happening, once again, almost too quickly to track or predict. "Yes, I did. And since you have risen, you may acquire a glass of water for both you and myself."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He leaned in and gave her a peck on the cheek then crossed to leave the room. She watched him leaving, taking in the nuance of his body, his build, the musculature of his back, thighs, and buttocks. She took a few steps, watching him as he went down the hall towards the kitchen.

"Trip, I am staring at your ass." She called after him, leaning into the hallway.

Without missing a beat he reached back and gave his right buttock a slap, not breaking his stride a moment.

The fact he had so readily and calmly accepted his plans of resignation being turned on their head had presented no end of relief to her. She had prepared herself mentally for his anger, knowing that it would be understated and reserved but she was willing to accept and open herself to it. As it was she only had felt a dull kind of subtle agitation, the kind she had experienced when a theory she had concocted had been proved incorrect. Rather than anger, frustration, or even rage he just seemed to be cogitating a revised long-view of what his life and the life of his family would entail. At the moment all she could sense from him was more existential frustration about his perception of their relationship with a strong thread of sexual tension running through it. He seemed to think they were having too much sex and not enough other quality interactions…ironic since this had, in point of fact, been their first sexual encounter since his return as something had seem to stymie every attempt the previous four days. There had been some heavy petting on the first and second night, but it had been unceremoniously interrupted before it could transition past foreplay by Solan and then a spate of calls from family members and at least three media outlets asking for an exclusive.

Perhaps they should engage in neuropressure tonight after returning from the human family gathering, and with any luck it wouldn't further reinforce his growing doubts by transitioning into more love making, though she would certainly not eschew the opportunity. She found the sex immensely fulfilling on both a physical and emotional level. In fact, it often precluded the need for meditation as it became a cathartic outlet for her emotions. She had, in fact, done some research into human sexuality, not from an academic perspective but on the vagaries of their extensive and varied sexual appetites. Some of it was intriguing, something that would require exploration. The real trick would be convincing Trip to opening his own sexual adventurousness with her despite the perception of Vulcan prudishness that was, perhaps, deserved.

As best as she could estimate her Pon Farr would be occurring within the next six months, she remembered little of her first, she had gone to a monastery to meditate through the event, but she could manage to recollection of what had happened. This bothered her to some extent but none of that really mattered now; she was bound and mated to the man she loved, they had a child, they had not been forced to compromise who they were to be together and any judgment they had been forced to endure they had weathered and risen above. The idea of having to meet his entire family, however, was a bit daunting at the moment, still, she would be enduring that particular trial in good spirits at the very least she reflected as Trip returned to the hallway and began towards their bedroom, a pair of glasses held in his left hand almost strutting down the passageway engaging in some exhibitionism clearly for her benefit.

* * *

><p>T'Pol watched with almost startled fascination as Elaine Tucker's face went stark white and she immediately approached her husband. Some of Trip's kinsmen were talking to him in a particularly animated fashion, she could not effectively make out exactly what was being said as the humans seemed to become less verbally precise the louder and more excited they got. A moment later she felt a sensation like her stomach falling through the floor, a sudden spike of dreadful anger in the bond which immediately gave way to a sort of cold numbness over a deep persistent ache.<p>

"Charlie, get over there and get Rob to shut the hell up." Elaine hissed in a low voice to her husband.

"What's goin' on?" The patriarch turned his head to bring his eyes to bear on the knot of men surrounding the sitting Trip, beers clutched in hands while Robert gestured wildly.

Charles Tucker jr. shook his head slowly, knowing exactly what was happening, he had experienced it himself right after boot camp during his first term of enlistment. It was a unique blend of jealousy, small-town bravado, and machismo that his brother had displayed then and seemed intent on displaying now. Robert seemed to hate the military with a special fervor. He categorized marines as psychopaths and failures who couldn't fit into normal society and sailors were just more of the same without the testicular fortitude to be marines. Charles Tucker had spent twenty five years in the MCS Navy as an security specialist, at first as a Special Operations Response Team member and later overseeing OPSEC for the same facilities he had originally been tasked to physically defend. He was over-trained and over-gened, a series five special forces solution to a security guard problem.

The North American Defense Sector air/space wing at Eglin, the propulsion labs at Whiting Field and of course the warp engine facilities at Canaveral; all of them critical locations that had to be defended against the enemy…a enemy…any enemy. After years and years, three tours honing himself into an elite door-kicker and no enemy ever materialized, no threat to humanity that would have to be put off or fought back, no aliens trying to sabotage the air fields from which defensive screens could launch, no terrorists threatening to set off a Warp reactor. Robert had been merciless in his critique of the inherent uselessness of the craft on which Charlie had built his career.

Trip though…

Trip was in every way shape and form the sailor that Charlie had never been but always wished he could be. His son's brilliance was evident almost as soon as he was big enough to move on his own. Everything came almost painfully easily to Trip in both intellectual, academic, physical, and intrapersonal pursuits. When Trip was tested for intelligence using the old standard IQ scale he'd scored in the mid two hundreds range as a child. Under the current system his IQ was still a full 50 points above average which easily made his son the smartest person he had ever known. And his martial pedigree was no less impressive. It was this area specifically that Robert Tucker had probably latched on to, Charlie could almost imagine what was being said and was able to adequately piece the rest of it together from what he could already here.

What was a family reunion with a schism and drama?

Fucking perfect, that was what!

Of course it would be getting a few beers into everyone that would start this ugly stage of the process. They had been trying to carefully cloister T'Pol and Solan, regulating the exposure to the extended elements of the Tucker clan. The part that was almost darkly amusing was the fact that in their effort to protect their Vulcan daughter-in-law and grandchild they had in effect left their son out in the open to all the prodding, questioning, subtle resentment, and ridicule. It would seem to be easy to resent Trip: the warp-setting Captain, hero of Vulcan, designer of MCS's premier warship, father of the first human-alien hybrid born, husband to a beautiful and exotic woman like T'Pol. But all Charles jr. could feel about his was unbelievable pride and a father's unconditional love.

Trip had stood from where he was sitting and was crossing over to a bench looking out at the water with Robert still in pursuit, still applying the goads.

"Elaine, try to keep everyone away for a bit, I'll take care of this." He replied quietly as he walked over to where his son had retreated and was currently being pursued.

"Uncle Rob, this is really not a conversation you want to have." Trip could be heard saying as Charlie drew closer.

"Why not? You're some big-shot hero, right? You run around kicking everyone's ass, making us big and popular with everyone, right?"

Trip was visibly gritting his teeth, "You don' un'erstand what yer talkin' about, Uncle Rob…"

"I understand that you and your type throwin' your weight around is why they attacked earth." Rob declared, knowing that it was a particularly sore barb to set into Trip.

"That's over the fucking line!"

Charlie turned to see his eldest son taking an almost menacing step towards Robert as Trip sunk onto the bench.

"You can watch your mouth with me." Robert spat back, lifting a scolding finger at Albert. If it came to blows it would probably be evenly matched if Trip did not intercede, Robert's bulk easily matched him to Albert's advantage in terms of youth. Al had always been softer than Trip, but had always exhibited a sort of subtle grace and superiority that befit his position as first born.

Charlie was stunned by the next voice of protest; Robert's youngest son Jerry. "Dad, you're out of line, Trip doesn't deserve this kind of crap."

"Elizabeth was my niece too, he wasn't the only one related to her, and it was his sort that got the Xindi all riled up in the first place."

Charlie drew close to his brother, staring him in the eye, "That's bullshit and you know it Rob. You can throw your weight around with Al, but I could lick you then and I could lick you now. And _I_ don't want you talkin' about my daughter, period. What those bastards did to her n' all those other folks is on them, not my boy, not UEN, and not MCS."

Robert crossed his arms defensively, "Your boy ain't some delicate and unique snow flake, so why can't he tell us some big shot war-hero stories, hell, we tax payers have paid for enough metal to hang on his chest. Seems he can't turn around without killin' someone or another, making humanity look like assholes to the rest of the universe, I'm not sure how he can look at himself in the mirror."

Albert paled visibly, somehow expecting that Trip would, within seconds, be ripping his uncle in half. Jerry similarly balked, taking a step back almost as if the words had struck him physically. All Charlie could do was to stand there with his mouth hanging open, too stunned by the statement to even work up the will to belt his brother in the mouth.

"There are things…" Trip said quietly, solemnly, the beer bottle cradled in his hands seeming to drag his body and shoulders forward and down in a tired slump, something trying to choke the words out of his throat, "that I have never discussed with anyone."

Charles junior sat down on the bench next to his son, nodding slowly while his eldest son and one of his nephews drew closer to where Trip sat. "Vulcan, son?"

"No," he shook his head, "No, dad…I don't even think about Vulcan, because there's still..." he raised one of his hands up towards his chest, fingers open in a loose clutching gesture as his hand bounced in loose circles, "still all this stuff from forty seven."

"What happened to you, Trip?"

"Dad, just leave it be." Albert tried to interject only to be cut off by an admonishing gesture from the elder Tucker.

"Naval special warfare was tasked with hunting down hard targets then callin' in orbital strikes. MARSOC was playing hunter-killer up in the McKaskill range on Celes two tryin' to flush the enemy down into the Courtney River valley and it was just way to target rich an environment, they figured out that the klinks were getting reinforced heavily. Everyone that the Marines would kill, they would replace with two more." He looked down at the beer in a distracted way, as if somehow the brown glass of the bottle would transport him back to the events as they had occurred.

Charles junior placed a hand on his son's shoulder, "It's alright, son, you don't have to explain."

"Well, I for one would like to know why your boy is walking around like a sour-puss, ruinin' the evenin' for everyone else, Charlie." Uncle Robert groused, doing little to hide his anger with his nephew.

"Rob, stow it." Charles growled, "You weren't in the navy, you have no idea what it can be like for guys who've been in heavy combat."

"Neither do you, Charlie, you were security for Chris'sake, you never left near earth orbit!"

Trip spoke up, "Robinson, Jefferies, Carter, and Billick…those were the four guys I went out with; light team special observation. Robinson had come over to NSW from MARSOC, Billick was an SID thirty one gun jockey, they'd been runnin' as a team for about seven months when I got shuffled over to naval special warfare. So we did a shuttle insertion up in the McKaskills and walked to where we believed our objective would be."

Jerry stepped over closer to Albert, watching Trip intently with the understanding he was about to hear the kind of war story that only happened once in a generation and he would only read about as kind of a broad obscuration of after-the-fact accounting done by men who weren't there and wrote in the context of history being dead events that happened to dead people in dead lands over dead causes.

"Turns out, we were inside a division sized klink AO, and there was a transport hub down in the bowl valley they'd been usin' to move troops and supplies from a bunch'a cloaked ships in orbit down planet side." Trip rolled the beer bottle in his fingers his shoulders remaining in their sagged position as he stared out at the water. "Then we got compromised…"

"What do you mean?" Jerry asked, his voice betraying a bit of shock and breathless anticipation.

"They found us, just a foot patrol, pickets I guess you could say…we reduced 'em but they got a call out and that drummed up every klink in that brigade lookin' for us." Trip paused, swallowing, "Jefferies got it first, a grenade then five disruptor hits. Carter tried to help, ran over to where Jefferies went down and tried to carry him back and took nine hits, and down he went. We went to low crawlin' forward, tryin' to reach 'em both and that's when the mortars started droppin' on us."

Trip paused again, beginning to slowly peel back the label on the bottle as the other four men hung silently on the words. This was not an animated recounting, nor was it the blubbering breakdown of a man who hadn't been hardened to it all. There was something in the voice, though, that promised that the telling would only serve to further haunt the listeners providing them the briefest of insights to the teller.

"We called in everything we could, danger close, by that point we just wanted to take as many of them with us as we could." Trip finished peeling away a single long strip of the label, "They fell back for a few minutes and we figured that was our window to beat feet. When we reached Carter and Jefferies they were both pretty much good as gone, so I slung one and Robinson got the other and we started headin' to an extraction point." Trip took hold of another edge of the label and tore another strip free in a single quick movement, the tearing sound causing Albert and Uncle Robert visibly flinched, "But they weren't havin' any of that, and we started takin' fire again before we'd gotten' twenty meters. I got hit, Billick got hit, Robinson got hit. Wasn't bad enough to drop any of us but every lil bit helps."

Charlie already knew how the story was going to develop, and his expression grew more and more sympathetically sad for his son.

"It's all 'bout the shot placement. You take a series five in basic body armor and you can put fifteen or sixteen in 'em jus' so long as nothin' vital gets hit. Well after five or six in we were none of us in to good'a shape, course Carts and Jeff took the worst'a it, so by the time we got pinned back down they were gone, nothin' left we could do for 'em. They'd both taken about fifteen, sixteen hits a piece by that point. So we grabbed some cover n' called for more artillery and air, but by that point the Klinks weren' 'bout t'come outta cover so we couldn't do much until we got air back on station. So for 'bout thirty minutes'r'so they were just probin' us again and again, lobbin' in a few mortars 'n grenades and takin' pot shots but nothin' too serious. We eased back on our fire a bit 'cause we went in with'a light load, and that's when they pushed again. It was mad minute for about twen'y minutes straight. We took anythin' n' everythin' off Jeff and Carts to keep up the fire, tossin' grenades, demolition charges, smoke, craterin' charges. Billick musta done 'bout thirty of 'em with his DMR and I can't even begin t'tell ya how many I put down."

Albert felt a sympathetic twinge of dread for his younger brother; the one that had always seemed to be the strongest of the three siblings, the most daring and fearless, and this is what all that had wrought.

"Didn' seem t'discourage 'em much 'cause they charged again eight, nine times and each time we beat 'em back, we were down 'bout a mag each. So when they hit us that tenth time we were usin' our side arms so we'd 'least have mag for our primaries left. That's when Robinson got it. A grenade went off right in his hole, then they popped 'im about twenty six times."

Trip's grip tightened suddenly around the bottle, "So it was jus' me'n Billick left, sun was startin' t'set, air thirty minutes out, and artillery had been recalled 'cause the deflection didn' provide for accurate placement."

Charlie knew what was coming, could almost taste it, feel it in the air, smell it like an infected wound. It was an infected wound, everything about Trip's behavior and body language said it was an injury that had never healed. "It's okay, Trip, you don't have to-"

"So that final rush me n' Billick just let go with everythin' we had. Dumped every mag, just anything we could do to stop the rush. Billick bought it that wave, and he just turned to me for a second…" Trip swallowed hard; bit his lip, "he turned n' he just said 'run'."

"Did you…?" Jerry asked the question, his voice in solemn and reverent awe.

"I waited a few minutes, cause air was about five minutes out, figured the reaction team would be there any minute 'n the air would beat the klinks back long enough to secure the bodies, but fact was there was nowhere to touch down a reaction team…whole side'a the mountain was crawlin'. All I could hear was all them klinks shoutin', cussin' comin' up through the woods, up the mountain, must'a been a few hundred of 'em…so I grabbed Billick's body, tossed it cross my shoulders and just started runnin' for the extraction LZ."

Trip leaned back, looking to his older brother and cousin for a moment, "I'm still here which basically means I got clear. Air came in and pretty much flattened everythin' standin' higher than eight inches and the next mornin' we came in and policed the bodies of Billick, Robinson, Carter, and Jefferies, was kinda a miracle that they were pretty much intact, so we had somethin' to bury, but nothin' we could let their families see." He took a swig of the beer then with a flick of his arm sent it hurdling out into the water thirty yards away at speeds that suddenly and starkly reminded everyone of his strength relative to them. "And that's what got me a silver star…" He looked at his uncle with eyes that bespoke pain and an expression that said nothing but firmly tamped down rage, "So, ya see, Uncle Rob, that's why I don't like wearin' the dress whites, that's why I don't feel proud 'bout the medals, and yes, I do sometimes have a hard time lookin' at myself in the mirror."

Trip stood up abruptly, nobody moving an inch perhaps out of some sort of fear of his anger or out of reverence for the story he had just told. What did you say to a man who had been through that? What did you call a man who had endured it? Hero was a hollow platitude, heroism was an abstracted and faulty concept; this was something different and impossible to explain to those who hadn't experienced it; obligation, duty, necessity…something infinitely more elemental than mythic concepts of paragon behavior. Trip wasn't a hero, he was something more, something different, men that destroyed themselves in body and soul for the sake of their people's interests…whether those people understood them or not…were beyond something petty and self-ingratiating like the title of hero; they were subtle gods, forces of nature, a grim necessity for the continued existence of humanity. Trip, like this adopted brotherhood of MCS sailors and Marines, were inadvertent, unwilling, defiant martyrs who sacrificed themselves again and again on the altar of human progress.


	44. Chapter 44

"Three warships and over a hundred warriors died gloriously at the hands of the humans, we must repay them ten-fold for this!"

There were grunts and roars of ascent among the gathered house leaders, the kind of bellicose posturing Toral had come to expect. Of course the fool wouldn't offer his ships and men up to the vanguard to exact the toll from the humans; that would require something to much like real courage.

"If they died gloriously then they are among their ancestors in Sto'vo'kor and their spirits do not require a tribute in blood. Their honor is intact if your assertion is true." Mortol shouted in reply.

Toral had never considered Mortol an ally, he was aloof and his house did not wield any particular power beyond their reputation as exemplary warriors. Five times other houses had sought vendettas against the house of Mortol and five times had been sent scurrying back to their holdings like a whipped pup for their efforts. Mortol's house seemed to revel in a good fight yet they had not engaged the humans years ago during the ill-conceived adventurism and foray into human territory. This either meant that Mortol did not view humans as worthy foes or that he knew how to pick his fights, either option was useful to Toral.

"Klingon blood was spilled at human hands! There must be reciprocity!" Sopek, was one of the original War Targs that had called for invasion of human space that had resulted in their initial route. His house had been fortunate enough to have enjoyed good standing with many of the other great houses and had prospered in the years for suspended-vendettas.

Kurn, ever the legalist despite a respectable warrior heritage, stood. He and his house had been markedly silent during the initial calls for invasion and the military campaign itself despite having sortied two ships of his own to the effort which had served to secure supply lines. "If blood must be exacted it must be exacted in kind. We would have to find human hegemonic interests with a third party, be sought by the third party's government as assistance, then send a single warship to engage and punish the human expansionism. What you call for is not recompense, but war."

There were some grunts of agreement; Kurn had exposed the agenda for what it was.

"Toral, you have established lines of trade and communication with the qarDaSngan, surely they would aid us in conquering the humans." Sopek declared.

Toral rose slowly, "It is the house of Lo'wahl that has established this dialogue and lines of trade with the qarDaSngan with my advice; it is Kuhrd of the house of Lo'wahl alone that can speak to their motives and disposition. If you wish to know of the qarDaSngan you should speak with him or send your own envoys, I am sure Lo'wahl's warriors will be open to acting as guides for the proper consideration."

There were laughs and crowing hoots from the gallery as Sopek returned to his seat with an expression of embarrassment. Sopek had a reputation as being tight with the purse strings and there was an understanding that in order to utilize the holdings and skills of another house on equal terms, there would necessarily be a tribute paid.

Chancellor Larr lifted a brow, a decidedly emotive gesture given his laconic demeanor at these squealing Targ moots. "Lo'wahl, what is your appraisal?"

The tall warrior stood, bared arms bearing the scars of battles and the musculature befitting a man half his age and still in the prime of his life, setting him apart from the other gathered council members and house leaders, "If you enter the capital to sell zilm'kach and find a man willing to trade power couplings for them, do you then ask the man to help you fight your enemy as well?"

Sopek rose again, "Spare us the parables!"

"We do not know the qarDaSgnan, we are not privy to their quarrels as they are, similarly, not privy to ours. The entire Empire does not have a quarrel with the humans, a few houses do. The events on Krios Prime robbed us of fools, which is a gift in its own right, and enriched the empire by adding Krios as a protectorate. If we wish to bring qarDaSgnan into our conflicts, we must be the first to offer to help them in theirs. That is the path of honor, to offer our blade with the expectation that we will never receive the assistance of theirs in kind. We must impress them with our honor first."

Several house leaders grunted, nodding their heads, Lo'wahl had invoked the truest of Klingon traditions; the road of honor had to be fulfilled. Departure from it was what had cost the empire in strength and glory.

"Now, I have ships that will run the corridor to their home world, they will be leaving within two standard weeks, if you wish to send your own envoys to speak with the qarDaSgnan you may be able to convince Toral to allow you passage on his son's ship as it will be making the trek across the expanse with my ships. My holds will be full of goods to trade and technology to exchange and I have no room for diplomats." Lo'wahl cut eyes over to Toral with a twinkle and a hint of a smirk.

A series of shouts went up, each house trying to drown out the other presenting their case to be the ones allowed on the journey. Lo'wahl sat back down, prompting Toral to lean in towards his friend, "This is news to me."

"I have to pay a dowry and it is only fitting that he be aboard the ship on its first trip."

Toral was equal measures amused and concerned, "We are not even sure that Duras will accept your daughter as bride."

"In which case the ship will be a gift among friends."

"A fine gift."

"And one I am sure you will do everything in your power to outdo."

Toral crowed at this; a little one-uppery among friends. It could grow quite expensive, but the benefits he would reap even if the pact between the families was not sealed in marriage would make the price a pittance in the long run.

* * *

><p>"Is it hard adjusting to life among humans?" The questioner was a female T'Pol assessed to be around Trip's age, one of large network of extended family members that had shown up to the Tucker clan gathering.<p>

"I do not find it excessively trying, the community in which we reside is spread out and there is little contact with our neighbors." T'Pol replied succinctly.

Solan had seemed to have few problems adapting to his human kin, many of whom fawned over the child, shocked at how much he seemed like a human child with the exception of the ears and slight upward sweep of his brows and the slightly bronze cast of his complexion courtesy of his copper rich blood. The elders of the family marveled at the fact that he so greatly resembled Trip when he was a toddler. T'Pol was experiencing stabs of maternal protectiveness as he child seemed to almost be passed around among her human in-laws but the intense excitement she felt radiating through the mother-child bond seemed to indicate she had nothing to fear.

Right now the child was sitting with his Great Aunt and Uncle on his paternal grandmother's side, softly chatting in his funny babbling sort of way as the two thoroughly enraptured adults listened as he gave them a detailed recounting of how he liked to play with the huge saber-toothed creature he seemed to view as his exclusive friend. T'Pol had done some research into early childhood development of both Humans and Vulcans and was pleased to find that Solan was reaching the various developmental milestones at a greatly accelerated rate.

Contrary to popular belief, Vulcan children did not innately develop faster than humans, they were simple expected to behave in a fashion that was indicative of advanced development. Vulcan parents were not nearly as accepting of what was, admittedly, normal childhood behavior and the strictures of culture usually resulted in Vulcan offspring seeming to be more mature and advanced than their human counterparts despite the fact that brain mapping indicated that both processed and utilized information at comparable rates. The fact that a Vulcan child tended to be stolid and reserved was viewed as maturity when in fact they were exhibiting no more actual intelligence than a boisterous and inquisitive human child. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule; her father's side of the family seemed to be less austere with their offspring as she had seen in some of her younger cousins. Still, cultural prohibition was something of a damper on the "spirit" of Vulcan children which could, perhaps, explain why their artistic expression as a culture seemed to be focused among adults and absent in the youth.

"Where are y'all located?"

Elaine stepped it, "They have a house on Satellite Beach near Canaveral. T'Pol, would you be a dear and take this over to Trip?"

Elaine Tucker had been doing what she could to keep the gawkers and interrogations at bay, but every now and then once slipped through. She was certain that if the positions had been reversed, Trip would be fielding an illogical number of questions from her extended family. The Tucker matron lifted an old-fashioned with a measure of bourbon inside and proffered the glass.

T'Pol nodded, thankful for the opportunity to check on her mate with adequate excuse given the social situation. This was hardly the first human social function she had intended and despite the fact that everyone seemed to be drinking she was amused to find that there were far fewer people significantly intoxicated than any of the number of military balls she had attended. She knew for a fact that a drink could often serve to calm Trip and he was still quite agitated over the confrontation with his uncle hours earlier.

"I shall do so."

She took the glass of the strong smelling brew and stepped off the deck, heading to where Trip sat on the bench swing next to his father. The two were talking, about what she was not certain until she drew closer and heard the words being spoken.

"…just didn't know how to process it all when we lost Lizzie, son. It hurt like hell but we had to be thankful that we still had you and Al. Nothin' is ever gonna replace Lizzie but the fact that you 'n T'Pol gave us a grandbaby…"

"I know, dad."

"I just want you to think about one thing. I know you say you're not proud of all you've done, in the wars 'n all, 'n I know it's still raw for you. But think 'bout this; there are alotta men out there, good men, strong men, who let what they go through destroy them, you've taken all the worst that can be thrown at you and never once stopped bein' the kind of man that a father can be proud of." Charles the elder said. T'Pol found it interesting that the man that had, on numerous occasions, spoken with such precise elocution to her in the past could so easily and comfortably relax his speaking patterns into the almost lazy-seeming regional pidgin-English of the North American south.

"Dad…"

"Let me finish, son." The elder man sniffled, "You make me n' your mother proud every day. You never ran away from any of it no matter how hard it became, that's what takes real strength."

"C'mon, dad…if you start gettin' all sentimental on me I'm not gonna be able to make it through the night."

Charles Jr. wiped what had to be a tear from his eye and chuckled, "B'sides, I always figured you'd never be able t'stick with somethin' this long."

Trip crowed, "And the truth comes out!"

"Well, looks like your better half is comin' over to get you liquored up." The elder commented, dropping his voice to mock-conspiratorial tones, "I think she's tryin' to get you drunk so she can take advantage of ya."

"She do'en't need liquor to do that, dad."

Charles junior rose, chuckling at his son, "I think that spot in that little copse of palms is still there from when you were sixteen…"

"Yeah, please don' bring that'n up dad."

"Bring what up?" T'Pol inquired as she drew within a few steps.

"Just some youthful indiscretion on the part of our boy, here." The elder man replied with a smirk and a nod. Before he turned to walk away he looked T'Pol right in the eye.

There was a kind of frankness about the older man that was evident only in the subtlest body language, something that seemed incapable of falsehood or misleading and T'Pol found a strange sort of comfort in it. The fact he was looking her right in the eye almost felt like an invasion, but she was not distressed by it in the slightest, "We're all really happy to have you as part of the family T'Pol."

She nodded softly, "It is agreeable to be a part of it."

The Tucker patriarch walked away, saying nothing further as she moved around the front of the swing to take a seat next to her mate still holding the glass.

"Bourbon, darlin'? Uppin' your game, huh?"

On a whim, perhaps more to show Trip a thing or two than any real desire on her part to consume the liquor she lifted the glass to her lips taking a small sip then lowered the glass as its full weight of it hit her. She coughed, her face flushing a heavy virdis as her hand involuntarily ascended towards her throat.

Trip plucked the glass from her fingers with a chuckle, "More than you were countin' on, isn't it?"

She coughed again, then spoke breathlessly, "I had not anticipated the taste based on the smell."

"You have to get used to it before you can pick up on all the flavors, darlin'."

Despite the discomfort in her mouth as taste buds warred with the overwhelming burn of the alcohol she felt warmth radiating through her body from just the tiny amount of liquor. "Would this be what is meant by 'rot gut'?"

"Not a bit, dad doe'n't buy anything but good quality bourbon." He brought it to his lips and took a long slow sip.

She arched a brow, sensing a challenge, "Then you must be able to identify it."

He leaned back a moment, moving an arm along the back of the swing to symbolically encircle T'Pol, rolling the liquid in his mouth and bringing the glass to his nostrils to take in the aroma. He remained still for a moment, eyes closed as he continued to taste the liquor before opening his eyes and swallowing. "Old Granddad bonded."

She cocked a brow.

"Orange label on the bottle with a hint of green, picture of an ol' fellah on the front?"

Her other brow climbed to meet the first, his description did indeed match the bottle from which Elaine had poured the drink. She had recognized no fewer than four other bottles that indicated they were Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, as well as one that indicated Rye Whiskey and two as Tennessee whiskey, "I underestimated your knowledge of spirits."

Trip hooked his left hand from the back of the bench to grasp T'Pol's upper arm and pulled her a little closer to him, "Dad always did like this one, not the best he keeps in th' house, but was still his favorite. First time he pulled out the bottle for me was when I got my commission."

"So there is some comfort in this for you?"

"Darlin' you coulda brought me a glass'a rubbin' alcohol and save for the part it bein' toxic I'd have found it comfortin'."

She placed a hand on his knee, "So that is to say you find the company comforting."

"Precisely."

"That is agreeable." She leaned her head in, resting it on his left shoulder, looking out over the water enjoying the physical contact more so than the setting which she found no less pleasing.

Albert looked up from the table he was occupying when Aunt Carolyn made a startled sound. His half-Vulcan nephew had been regaling them with tales about the creature they kept as a pet when he suddenly stopped talking and a little knowing smile crept onto his face. Albert looked over to his aunt, following her eyes over to the swing where Trip had been sitting with his father since the altercation with Uncle Robert. His younger brother was there with his Vulcan wife now, his arm wrapped around her and her head resting on him as they looked out at the gulf. Speculation about their relationship was rampant in the large extended family, but it was largely unspoken conjecture. It was the kind of opinion nobody ever spoke of, but sort of wore on their sleeve. You knew who thought it was some sort of sham or that it was a loveless marriage not by their words or actions as much as by their lack of them. Aunt Carolyn and cousin Mary were no exceptions; they seemed to genuinely think that T'Pol was some frigid goddess that Trip had put up on a pedestal. Jerry, for all his well-meaning, seemed to be from the camp that believed that T'Pol only put out as a means of controlling Trip and that his adoration of her was unrequited. Albert sort of knew better, with the exception of Jenny O'Doyle back when Trip was fourteen he had never been moony over anyone. For Albert, the existence of his nephew Solan was proof enough that whatever it was that existed between Trip and T'Pol was the genuine article.

Albert had seen enough planned pregnancy and regimented family propagation in his life and career; too many children that existed as part of a development arc or as fashion accessories. Jack and Jill went up the hill to check their biological clock, Jill hit forty and wasn't feeling so sporty so they went to the fertility doc. For those people there was something that reeked of ego in everything about the child, from the dulled, lifeless eyes, the dryness of their personalities, and the eventual self-destructive push in their adolescence and early twenties. They were people who hated themselves and everyone else because they'd never understood what it was to be loved.

Solan on the other hand…it was like what he could remember of Trip at that age. Albert never had to question whether or not his parents loved him and his siblings because it was always there, even when it was in the form of discipline that enraged and frustrated him, he always knew after the fact that his parents loved him.

There were some whispers behind them, clearly other relatives startled at what they were seeing. It didn't take meeting one to know that Vulcans were reserved in the extreme; it was a widely known fact that their people made no attempt to hide nor was there any attempt to dissuade people who had the perception of them as emotionless. Interviews with Vulcan invariably depicted people reserved in the extreme, their responses usually clipped and stilted, but always with a degree of eloquence that voided any potential that they were suffering from in-the-spotlight jitters. There was almost something subtly condescending about them, and in his limited contact with Vulcans in his professional capacity, Albert had seen nothing that seemed to dispel the perception.

Most of the advanced genetic developments that his father exhibited and brought over from his mother's side of the family had not manifested in Albert, but he did at least have superior vision and what he saw next almost dropped his jaw. T'Pol lifted her head, turning her face towards Trip then gently planted a kiss on his left ear.

His attention, and that of the small cabal of gawkers was quickly snatched away by the loud clearing of his father's throat. Everyone turned to see the still physically robust and imposing Charles Tucker Jr. looming nearby with a stern expression on his face.

"You folks wanna maybe not stare? It's rude."

* * *

><p>"Your sister?"<p>

Kuhrd stared at Duras with an imposing scowl.

Moments before the Klingon he had thought his best friend had approached, but his expression and demeanor had seemed decidedly threatening. The accusation that Duras had seduced Kuhrd's sister had taken him so by surprise he didn't even have time to be offended.

"Yes, _my_ sister!"

"I have never treated her any way other than honorably!" Duras protested.

Kuhrd drew closer still, leaving Duras to mentally scramble over what he would do if the more skilled and physically superior warrior decided to attack. Suddenly, Kuhrd's menacing visage began to crack, a grin crawling onto his face almost like a creature emerging from its hole, tearing away the angry and violent expression with one of mischievous mirth.

"Of course you have, I was merely having some amusement at your expense."

It was Duras' turn to look angry, "Don't do that to me! I thought you were going to kill me!"

"What do you think of my sister?"

Duras ran a hand over his beard, "She is a fine young woman, a credit to your house, why?"

"She has a particular fondness for you."

Duras pulled at his beard, almost bashfully, trying to occlude any appearance of pleasure that news brought him, "Is that so?"

"So you would not be opposed to being wed to her?"

Duras furrowed his brows angrily, "I will not permit you to have fun at my expense twice!"

"I'm serious."

Duras turned his head away a moment, looking off into space considering it, "She's far too young, your father would never approve."

"It was his idea."

Duras managed to maintain a stoic façade, "And what do you think of it?"

Kuhrd put fists on his hips, shaking his head slowly, "I tell you, I did not relish the idea of accosting and possibly killing any potential suitors. I know exactly where to find you."

Duras grimaced, "There you go again."

Kuhrd chuckled, the ever flappable Duras, there almost wasn't any sport in it but it was none-the-less amusing, "You're too easy."

"More importantly, has any of this been discussed with Khersa herself, and when was someone going to bring it up to me?"

"I just did." Kuhrd frowned, confused as to how his revelation was not sufficient.

"Formally."

"My father and your father should be coming to talk to you even now, in two weeks we will be departing again to make a run to the qarDaSngna, you will be taking one of my father's ships and accompanying us, I believe we will formally announce the betrothal before we depart." The son of Lo'wahl explained quickly to his friend.

Duras stroked his beard thoughtfully, "Why would I not be taking one of mine or my father's ships?"

"The ship we will be giving you will be meant as a dowry."

Duras arched his brows, "That is exceedingly generous."

"So…I never got an answer to my question, what do you think of my sister?"

Duras folded his arms across his chest, weighing his next words carefully, "She is honorable, intelligent, and pretty. She carries herself in a manner that befits the station of a daughter of a great house, she is skilled in every way a house matron and house wife should be and any Klingon that would refuse her hand would be a fool."

"So that means you will not be wed to my sister…"

Duras furrowed his brow, squinting at Kuhrd, "What?"

"You said anyone that would refuse her hand would be a fool."

The son of Toral rolled his eyes, "Insulting me again!"

Kuhrd grinned, "Well, I suppose soon I will be able to call you brother."

Duras nodded, "If she'll have me, I am a good bit older than her."

The son of Lo'wahl pat his friend on the shoulder, "I don't think there is cause for concern in that regard."

* * *

><p>Hernandez shuffled towards the turbolift, stifling a yawn; she was not set to be relieving lieutenant commander Harraman for another three hours and in all fairness should still be in bed. The call that had awoken her came at just after 0313 and it seemed to indicate something very strange was going on. As she reached the access point she was joined by a similarly tired and disheveled looking lieutenant Sato, her pace was brisk despite the red around her eyes and the unkempt mop of hair that seemed to indicate she hadn't had time to attempt anything in regards to brushing it into place.<p>

"Hoshi?" It was more of a question than a greeting.

"They called you too, huh, ma'am?"

"Yeah, why did they wake you up?" Erika inquired as she depressed the call key.

"Something about weird signals, ma'am."

"That's all they said?"

"Yes, ma'am…we don't exactly have our sharpest tools on Charlie shift ma'am, if you'll pardon me for saying."

Hernandez shrugged, "Sometimes I think they should put some of these green-around-the-gills sorts on a DD or DDG for a tour or two before they kick them over to our big boats but…" She shrugged again.

"Any idea what this is about, ma'am?"

Erika shook he head, "I don't have the foggiest idea, but if they called you I'd assume it has something to do…"

"With a signal…" Hoshi finished with a halting chuckle.

"God, it is too damn early for us to be playing mommy."

The doors slid open to the turbolift car and the two entered, Erika pressed her ID badge to the scanner then indexed the bridge/CIC as their destination. The doors snapped shut and the car began the ascent stop a few seconds later and opening onto the porthole that led directly to the bridge. A pair of FMFs with their Red and yellow MP brassards stood watch, snapping to attention as Hernandez and Sato exited the lift car. The Marines added a palpable sense of safety that transcended what seemed to almost be a ceremonial function. Both had a slung M-55 Pulse Phaser rifle and M-27A1 Phase Pistol with a set of flash-bang grenades attached to their thermo-ballistic plate carriers. Lance Corporal Sanchez was also assigned a Marine Issue Remington 870 shotgun, the venerable design effectively unchanged in terms of operation since its introduction two hundred years prior. Corporal Higgs was further augmented with a MAR-12 MOD 2 CIW in the heavier and more exotic 10.6x37mm chambering. These two additions to the normal FMF armament were one of the subtle hints that the state of the quadrant had not improved as far as MCS's strategic framework was concerned.

The two officers strode through the porthole and onto the bridge; Hoshi heading for the signal and communications station and Hernandez towards the center of the conn. "Report, mister Harraman."

"Commander, we detected unusual solar activity twenty eight million kilometers coreward of our position at oh two fifty zulu and directed our x-ray telescopy array in its direction to begin taking readings at the advice of Electronic Warfare. During that time signal and communications began to pick up non-native ultra-high frequency radio waves emanating from an area of space twelve hundred seventy kilometers above the corona of the system's primary solar body."

"That's mighty close…"

"We turned up the gain and went narrow band, hit it with everything we could think of; magnetic resonance, x-ray receiver, spectrographic, particle displacement …nothing, there's nothing there." The Lieutenant Commander explained, something in his demeanor seeming nervous, as if he had to provide a very good explanation as to why they had risen the Commander at this hour.

"Nothing at all?" Hernandez furrowed her brow.

"Negative, commander. We chased the signal right back down to its source within one meter of point of origination and unless whatever was broadcasting was the size of a soda can, there is nothing there."

Erika folded her arms, cradling her chin in her hand as she looked at the sensor data. It was strange, nothing about it made sense, "If it was a nav buoy they'd have made it larger, anything that small with that much broadcast power would have a really short life-span." She lifted her head looking over to signal and communication, "Anything, miss Sato?"

Hoshi knit her brows, listening to the audio conversion of the wave form through a pair of headphones, "Wait one, commander."

She'd heard something similar to this before, the wailing peaks and underlying stutter of the signal, but there was something different about it this time, almost distorted like a voice shouted down a concrete pipe would be. Whatever it was it was naturally occurring, not deliberate. The distortion had something to do with point of origination and transit media. "It almost sounds…." She paused a second, waiting for what she was sure would come next, and hearing it she felt a lurch in her stomach she couldn't explain, "Xindi, ma'am."

"Almost, miss Sato?"

"There is some very strange distortion going on, almost like the point of origin is not the actual point of origin, ma'am."

Hernandez felt a sudden wave of irritation, she ran a hand over here face; why were these kind of things an issue, why was there a mandate to catalogue and investigate them, why did _she_ have to be awakened at three in the fucking morning to deal with it? What was it about humans that just _had_ to know what it was, what it meant? Who gives a damn? She knew what she needed to ask next but she couldn't, frankly, divine a reason as to why she should care. "Is there any chance it is a distress signal, miss Sato?"

Hoshi shook her head slowly, "Negative, does not seem likely, ma'am, signal variation indicates massive data load, they're pushing down a lot of info. Could be telemetry, complex communications, hard to say."

And if had been a distress signal, she had a hard time figuring out why she should care. The Xindi had been intent on wiping out humanity…it was an order far too tall for their short arms to reach, but the very fact that they had considered it was worth consideration. If an ant was trying to chew through to your jugular, you didn't forgive it for being unable to complete the task…it was your damn jugular in the first place! She had been of the opinion that the task groups should have orbitally bombarded every heavily populated Xindi planet to ensure they were adequately castrated. It was a hard dynamic to put a thumb on. There were old concepts; do unto others as has been done unto you, do unto others before they do it unto you…this was do unto others as they _would_ do unto you. Sorry kids, you screwed up, and as your consolation prize…enjoy the stone-age! If she never saw another Xindi ship in space she wouldn't feel the least bit sorry. Here was a group of peoples so morally relative that they would preemptively wipe out an entire species and all the associated flora and fauna of their homeworld just because some ding-bats from the future said so. If they could take that leap on word alone and set about a course of action that meant species-linked omnicide without a little research or observation then they didn't deserve to have capability of doing so. Hell, they didn't deserve to leave their house until they learned how to play with others. She would have considered it tough love except for the fact there was nothing even beginning to resemble love on her part.

The fact that they had seemed to be patsies for an extant group hadn't redeemed them at all in her eyes, but she hadn't been the one calling the shots and, in all honesty, she was kind of glad of the fact. Her course of action would have been an effective genocide but at the very least there would have been enough of them left that in a few hundred years they could be back into the industrial age at least, far better than they were willing to accord the humans.

"Do a spectrographic pass for carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen, anything above 38 parts per billion set a course for the anomaly, otherwise forward your findings with navigation plot to Breakwater and maintain current course." Hernandez declared.

"Aye, ma'am."

"I'm going back to my rack, keep me apprised of any changes, you have the conn mister Harraman."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Erica looked over to where Hoshi was still listening to the signal through a pair of headphones, "Miss Sato, you are relieved until your normal duty shift."

"If there are no objections I'd like to continue monitoring the signal, ma'am." Hoshi looked up from the console that was providing a visible oscilloscope reading of the signals.

Hernandez nodded, "Carry on, miss Sato."

* * *

><p>"You're fuckin' shittin' me!"<p>

T'Pol heard the words booming from Trip's office just down the hall before the wave of anger worked its way into the bond.

"We haven' done but about twenty seven percent of the overhauls she needs and we're still bingo-…"

A pause, silence, it was clear whoever Trip was talking too was replying.

"So they got the five reserve magazines emplaced?"

Silence.

"Fully replenished?"

Pause.

"We needed to run an additional seven hundred meters of redundant EPS lines."

Listening to the reply.

"Well, yeah, I 'spose we can do the last couple hundred meters of grid once we're under way if'n it's all in the cargo bays, but what 'bout those entertainment provisions and some decent chow arrangements for my sailors?"

Again, pause.

"No, no, sir, that sounds more'n adequate."

Waiting.

"Thirty two hours, un'erstood, sir."

Moments later Trip exited the study and rejoined T'Pol in the kitchen where she was watering some small potted plants she kept indoors to keep the air fresh. She didn't speak but gave her mate an inquisitive look and further prodded mentally.

_It is fortunate Solan wasn't inside to hear your profanity._

"I called it!" Trip exclaimed his voice emphatic but not sounding triumphant.

"Called what?"

"We're getting sent out, emergency sortie, in-."

"Twenty seven hours." T'Pol finished. "How long?"

"Whatta ya mean?"

"If it is an emergency sortie that would imply that you will be returning to port afterwards, it is logical to assume they would wish to finish the refinements and upgrades once the issue is resolved."

Trip shrugged, "Guess it depends on how long whatever the emergency is takes us to resolve, darlin'."

She found herself fighting the urge to hit something; there was tightness in her chest and a churn in her stomach, it was almost like an itch she couldn't reach, soreness all over, heat in her face. She couldn't begin to describe or explain the feelings, freezing in place and taking in a deep breath trying to steady herself.

"That's called frustration, darlin'."

"It is highly disagreeable."

Trip shrugged, this was just part of the job. Everything was subject to the requirements of service; this was one of those ugly little inconveniences that went with the territory. He sense a sudden spike of dread coming from T'Pol but before he could say anything to reassure her it had given rise to the question she asked.

"This isn't war, is it?"

Trip shook his head, "No, baby, not yet anyway. If there was a palpable strategic threat bein' mobilized they'd have called it immediate activation. Emergency sorties aren't in the same class."

"Where are you being sent?" T'Pol set the plant she was watering down as the nervous energy began working its way to her fingers.

"Dunno, they pro'ly won't tell us anythin' until we're slip our moorin's."

There had been moments of quiet intimacy over the past two days, but little more in terms of physical intimacy since the family reunion two days prior. Trip's revelation before his relatives the afternoon of the reunion had given her a glimpse into the dark place where he hid things from her and reliving the events as he told his family about them had reawakened the trauma of it. She could feel the hurt, confusion, and self-loathing from him even if he didn't say or act in a fashion that indicated it was there. To everyone else it was Trip recounting a war story; the horrors of war couldn't be counted in losses of life or destruction but in their effect on the individual level. And for Trip, there had been a profound personal effect in going back into his mind to recount the events of that fateful day.

What he had not said was that he had been forced to drop Billick's body while falling back to the extraction site when he was attacked by a group of Klingon soldiers. The details of how he had escaped, though she expected she knew how, had been avoided but there was still a prevailing since of guilt about the fact that he could not get the SID operator's body back to the extraction site, it just compounded his survivor's guilt over the whole thing.

"Twenty seven hours is a decidedly small measure of time."

"I doubt we're gonna be gone for more'n a month at most, then we'll pro'ly put back in to finish the refits."

"Unless another crisis arises, like Krios."

Trip shrugged again, "Well, you said you didn' want me resignin' my commission."

T'Pol looked away, that had stung even if it wasn't intended too, "I desire to have spent more time with you."

She felt his arms close around her waist before she could react, "Well, we'll just have to really live it up for these next twenty somethin' hours."

"What do you have in mind?" She turned in his arms to face him.

"Let's all go out for lunch, then we can play with Solan n' teeth for a while, go for a walk on the beach, and maybe…later…when someone's down fer the night…"

T'Pol required no additional prompting, "Yes, that is agreeable."

* * *

><p>Nassir slung his seabag over his shoulder and stepped off the transporter pad to see Lieutenant Commander Snellis already waiting for him. His former XO looked to have more than a little wear around the edges, an indication that he had either been taking thorough advantage of a liberty pass or had been excessively busy. He hadn't really kept up with the crew to see what they had been up to since returning to port. Still, if he knew Snellis, he had been quite productive.<p>

"Tired this morning, mister Snellis?"

The lieutenant commander bobbed his brows, "There was a gaff-up taking on reaction mass, the refueling boat was trying to insist we use the same protocols for taking on oil on a CG, it took us about an hour to get that sorted out then he was running the pumps as slow as humanly possible just to screw with us, sir."

Nassir rolled his eyes, "We should kick his name over to Black or Gardner."

"Logistic chain blue falcons, sir, 'nother beautiful day in the navy."

Nassir chuckled, leaving the transporter pad and beginning down the corridor to the boarding gantry, "The skipper on board?"

"Yeah, he got here about an hour ago. He's been cobbling together crews to lay in additional EPS lines since he stepped off the transport pad." Snellis replied with an inscrutable edge in his voice.

Al-Sistani didn't break his pace, didn't even bother looking over at the number 2 officer, "Problem with the old man?"

"No, sir…" Snellis countered, then kind of paused with a semi-audible hitch of a sigh, "I just was under the impression he was going dirt-side then ease out."

"Would you have preferred that, mister Snellis?"

He shrugged, this conversation might be about to go somewhere he would not like, but he had to say it, "Well, sir, I sort of thought you'd want command of the boat."

Nassir poked his tongue into his cheek, shrugging his brows as his shoulders were encumbered by his seabag and deployer. "There wasn't any indication they were or are ready to hand me command of another boat."

"Sir, I served on four boats prior to the Detroit and you were the best CO I'd had bar none. "

Nassir turn his head slightly, "You don't think Captain Tucker is a good CO?"

"I don't know, sir, I just sort of always viewed him a short time solution, an egg head."

Nassir stopped dead in his tracks, "Did you even look at his profile?"

"No, sir, I didn't."

"Maybe you should. Regardless, I don't think I'm quite ready for command of a boat like this, but it's pretty clear I'm being groomed, so as long as the skipper keeps doing the job he has been doing, I'm perfectly fine to sit back and learn."

"Aye aye, sir."

Before they could reach the gantry Tucker came charging down with a quick and purposeful stride, his bare forearms covered in dust and tiny nicks. His eight point cover was shoved in the thigh pocket of his NWU utilities and his uniform was covered in all manner of dust, dirt, and soot.

"Problem, skipper?" Nassir crowed.

Tucker half grinned and approached, "Man, I need some coffee or an energy drink'r somethin', I really should have caught some shuteye before headin' up here and jumpin' head long into this EPS hardening."

Nassir outstretched his hand, as Tucker clapped his firmly into the waiting opposite in a firm and friendly hand-shake. Al-Sistani noted that Trip didn't look so much exhausted or tired as much as frazzled. It was safe to bet that he had been quite busy almost non-stop for over a day now. If he knew anything about Charles Tucker III, it was that he was a ball or energy that was almost impossible to stop once he had a task in sight.

"Let me stow my bag and we can kick over to the L two BX, skipper."

Trip furrowed his brow a moment, "You're early, aren't ya?"

"Technically, you are too, sir. You didn't have to report for another three hours."

Trip chuckled ruefully, "Yeah, well, the crews they had workin' on our boat were half-assin' it. It shouldn'a taken 'em but about three days to lay in all this redundant grid, so someone had to get on up here'n take care of it."

Nassir shook his head with a grin, "At some point you're going to have to learn to delegate."

"I can delegate with the best of 'em!" Trip crowed in reply.

"Just can't find anyone competent enough to oversee, huh?"

There was a twinkle in Tucker's eye, "How much you know about EPS grids?"

"I'll defer to your expertise, skipper!" Nassir fired back between hearty chuckles.

Snellis watched the interpersonal dynamic between the XO and CO with mild fascination. They hadn't even served together for a year but already seemed like best friends. He had always considered Nassir Al-Sistani a truly magnificent officer, a real stud of a naval commander and enjoyed how personable he was but he never once considered him that much of a friend. He didn't dislike the Commander in the slightest, he considered serving with the man an honor and a privilege, but you just didn't make _friends_ with your CO…did you?

"I can stow your bags, sir." Snellis offered.

"I'd actually kinda like you to join us, mister Snellis." Tucker declared, "Some stuff command staff needs t'discuss."

The lieutenant commander nodded, not sure if this was good news or not, somehow wondering if it had anything to do with his comments earlier and feeling the churn of concern in his stomach despite the irrationality of the belief.

A crewman passed with a grav-cart loaded with storage containers and the lieutenant commander immediately halted him noting the boatswain's mate rank device on his sleeve, "Please convey the commander's personal effects to his quarters."

The young man nodded, taking the Seabag and Deployer bag, "Aye aye, sir."

Benkei walked up to the table where Tucker, Al-Sistani, and Snellis were sitting knowing the kind of reaction he would get. He had four days of stubble on his face and half-a-sandbox worth of dirt and dust on his MCUU, rifle still slung, caked with dirt and magazine pouches clapping in his filthy battle-rattle. Looking for "trouble" at Annapolis had quickly escalated to some informal field work over at Twentynine Palms. Crazy that their idea of recreation had been what others considered training, but that's just what being a cut above meant. Running around the Morongo Basin playing ad-hoc OPFOR and scaring the figurative and in one case the literal, crap out of Marines bound for MAC-V seemed like fun to the MARSOC set.

"What…the…hell." Tucker exclaimed upon catching sight of the Marine officer and three of his subordinate senior NCOs and one of his younger Lieutenants.

"I told you I was going to go find trouble."

"Re-enactin' Vulcan?" Trip knew it was a badly off-color joke, the kind a Marine would appreciate.

Musashibo's face sunk into a frown, "Sir…"

Trip was about ready to chastise himself for making the comment, perhaps, far too soon for a fellow officer who had lived through it.

"This was way more fun than Vulcan." The Marine officer finished.

"Ya see, when I hear a Marine talkin' about lookin' for trouble I always assume it's got somethin' to do with booze and some stuffed shirt's daughter, I forgot how you MARSOC guys get your rocks off."

Musashibo took on a cryptic expression, "Who's to say we don't do that too, maybe that's why we were hiding out in the Mojave."

Trip chuckled, "Your boys squared away? I ain't seen a jarhead on the boat yet."

"I've currently got them doing Harassment and Interdiction on the ship sir, they've been at it for the past four hours."

Al-Sistani furrowed confused brows and Snellis gave voice to the expression, "What?"

Tucker suppressed a smirk, turning his head away to avoid laughing.

"As of 0330 I had them break off into section sized groups and they are currently short-sheeting every rack in the enlisted, NCO and junior officer quartering areas."

"Oh come on, you can't be serious." Snellis protested.

"I can instruct them to give the command staff the same treatment too if you're feeling neglected, sir." Benkei replied with an even expression.

"Be advised, my quarters are Marine Mischief hardened, major, I don't wanna see some lance showin' up on the binnacle list t'morrow."

"Duly noted, sir, I'll get Pritchard on that."

"Oh God." Tucker chuckled.

Benkei let the jocularity last for a few minutes before shifting to a more serious tone, "Any idea why the recall, sir?"

"No idea, our orders haven't come over yet, guess we'll know for sure in 'bout an hour."

"So, what condition did they leave the battlewagon in, sir?" Benkei inquired.

"Hard to say, but I swear, if I found out they decided to gundeck anything on that refit and repair schedule, I'm gonna float check 'em over to L one when we put back into port."

"Yut." Musashibo affirmed. "By the way sir, you're due to requal inside a week, I'd recommend we appropriate the range hole once we get underway."

Tucker nodded, "Alright, Major, set it up and we'll get that done."

Nassir spoke up, "Sir, is it true Enterprise left port inverted before Vulcan?"

"Yeah, we sure did."

Nassir, leaned his elbows on the table, "I'd love to top that…"

"Just as long as it won't get us court martialed, you're free t'figure somethin' out, Commander."


	45. Chapter 45

"This location was deemed a point of key strategic significance by command, it's location was originally slated to be a corridor down which extant forces would be able to evade patrols right to Earth. There were nine of 'em originally plotted out and have since been identified and our patrol patterns have been adjusted to deal with the issue." Trip explained to the senior officers and personnel. It was the reason they had been sortied in the first place, it was important they know the situation. "Three days ago, En'erprise detected an anomaly in the coronal expanse of the system's local star, right where the corridor begins. Lieutenant Sato, their signal and communications chief detected signals emanating from an undetermined source that matched Xindi broadcast patterns. The problem is, it all coincides too neatly and Command was really hush hush about why they changed up our sortie and patrol sectors, so could be that the Xindi were going' for a second-wave attempt and they just don't realize that we'd switched it up on 'em."

"Are we going back to war with the Xindi, captain?" Master Chief Petty Officer Wally Glen inquired with something of a severe set to his face.

"Unknown at this time, until we have figured out what exactly is goin' on, we can't reach that conclusion."

Ever the XO, Nassir piped up, "Orders, sir?"

"Element of surprise, we're going to maintain warp field into the system, prior to entry to the solar community, I want high gain passes lookin' for reactor blooms and atypical magnetic resonance signatures. If they've already got boats in the area I want to know relative position and disposition before we pop out. Once we enter the solar community, our sensors are gonna get scrammed when we go double forward on our navigational deflector. Drop us out two hundred fifty thousand kilometers from the Coronal discharge layer, dependent on the tactical disposition at the time, we'll then proceed in closer to check it out. Understood?"

There were nods of affirmation and a few "aye ayes" from the division heads and senior staff.

"On that note, let's get to work, gentlemen, our ETA is three hours."

The staff members rose from their chairs in the briefing/class-room and began exiting through the porthole to return to their duty stations. Within 6 hours of _Enterprise_ sending their report to the Breakwater Listening Post, the emergency response orders had been cut for the _Tirpitz_. It sort of made sense, she was easily the fastest ship available to MCS and could bring enough firepower to bear, if it came to that. It had taken them exactly fifty one hours to reach their current position, something of a marvel considering most of the fleet still wasn't pushing over warp 7.75 even in situations where exploiting the warp 8.1. subroutines would be beneficial. When Trip had built the reactor he had planned for warp 8.1 cruising, and even though it wasn't officially possible yet, he expected at the time that he could easily push the reactor to around 110% to squeeze out warp 8.6. As it was they were pulling warp 8.64, a new record and the second in as many months after they had held steady at warp 8.61 heading to Krios. Damn, it had only been three weeks ago that they had arrived in orbit over Krios…how the time seemed to fly.

Trip wasn't as sure about Lieutenant Commander Gibberti as engineering chief as he would like to be…the man was unimaginative and just a bit too bookish…and he had a hero complex. All the talk of how much of a privilege it was to serve on the same ship as him, how much he admired his work. It wasn't that Gibberti was incompetent…he wasn't by any stretch, but Trip couldn't help but feel like it was still _his_ engine and _his_ engineering staff with Gibberti acting as middle manager. He needed someone who would take command and, if needed, tell him where he could step off when he started sticking his nose into operations more than was rational for a captain.

He found himself wondering if he could get the chance to poach Kelby from _Enterprise_ and send Gibberti off to a CG class boat where he could further hone his skill set and, maybe, learn a thing or two about being the kind of assertive you sometimes had to be as an engineering division chief. It might not be fair to Archer though, Trip was already responsible for him losing his second most senior officer and his cultural attaché. Still, Hess was more than competent enough to take command of the power plant and engines, and it was about time she got her crack at division chief.

Trip sat down on the desk at the head of the briefing room, arms folded and once again mentally took stock of the last few years. The one thing that could, arguably, most have hurt _Enterprise_ and her Captain was the loss of T'Pol…he liked to think he was imminently essential to the ship's operation, but the fact was Kelby and the engineering division had been excellent students of the Tucker School of non-conventional engineering. Word was that Kelby had further tweeked intermix ratios and was now running the ad-hoc warp 8.1 power plant at 138% reaction mass efficiency. He wasn't belting out more horse-power as it were…but he was managing to get those horses to run on just sips of fuel. Honestly, if he could get him over on _Tirpitz_, Trip was relatively sure he could have warp 9 cracked before a year.

T'Pol.

Damnit…there it goes again.

He was just managing to get "over" the separation issues when the shakedown was drawing to a close. It wasn't that she wasn't always on his mind; he could just go to bed and night without longing for her smell and feel. Now, well…he almost smiled to himself when he thought about those last few hours before she had fallen asleep. At around 1930 Solan had started to drift off from the excitement of the day, and they had both watched with baited breath as he eventually succumbed to sleep and Trip had quickly taken him to his crib. Once their child was secure in his bed, Teeth settling down nearby they had made for their own bedroom. It wasn't love making they had engaged in, it was just sex…vigorous and energetic. In their post coital glow he had begun to tickle her, sparking protesting admonishment that he desist doing so. Of course, that had just come off like a challenge and he continued. She seemed honestly amused as she ordered him to stop, that's when the wrestling match began as they tumbled around the bed completely naked, she struggling for the upper hand and, just to be sporting, he allowing her to occasionally get it. Vulcan logic reared its head at the funniest moments. He still remembered what she said.

"_You should apply an arm bar."_

"_Why the hell would I wanna do that?"_

"_To win!"_

"_Who says I'm not winnin'?"_

That was when she stuck a mount in just the ever-so-right position and within minutes round two of the "physical intimacy" began. That fed into rounds three and four and T'Pol promptly admitted his superiority in the matter and after nestling into his side fell asleep. He had been forced to leave before she awoke…that bothered him a little but he felt she knew what he would have said and done had she not.

_Head back in the game, Tucker._

He pushed off from the desk, making his way to the porthole and stepping through began down the short corridor to the CIC. The FMFs, predictably, snapped to attention prompting Tucker to order, "As you were," allowing them to return to the at-ease stance. The holotank in the center of the CIC was already displaying a tree dimensional rendering of the star system and at least some of the bodies contained there-in. There was a swath of incomplete data on the side of the star opposite their approach which was to be expected…the solar body would put off too much energy and radiation for accurate scans of anything beyond it. Various overlays began to generate within the image, magnetic resonance, chemical spectrographic, magnetic charge displacement. He could still make out the fading trail of mildly ionized matter _Enterprise_ had left in its wake, but nothing else seemed out of place except for a very conspicuous data void near the star itself.

"So that's it…" He commented, more to himself than anyone else.

"We detected an anomaly there, sir." The Charlie shift electronic warfare division sailor couldn't have been more than twenty one. "We are getting zero data from it, nothing on magnetic, ionization, spectrographic, or X-ray passes, sir."

"Hmmm…" Trip cut eyes over to his XO then back to the electronic warfare station, a hint of mischief on his face, "Would you say it's a space oddity?"

Nassir rolled his eyes, mouth dropping open slightly. "Good God…"

Someone in the CIC snickered, between that and his XO's reaction Trip felt like the getting was good, "And here we are, sitting in a tin can."

"Yes sir, it is quite odd." The kid didn't even realize what was going on around her.

Al-Sistani folded his arms, "I'm not going to be clapping so you can just stop right now, skipper."

"We've gotta have one adult on the boat, huh?"

The XO smirked at his commander, "Leave Snellis out of this."

* * *

><p>V'Kara sat calmly in the chair she had come to see as her favorite in the house Minister T'Pau had acquired for Colonel Shelby. She was in the process of embroidering lines from the Kir'shara on a stole that she would present to her daughter in commemoration of her birth, it was a long tedious process but her patience for just about all things save for the affectations of a certain human was limitless.<p>

Speaking of the human…

Shelby's frustration had almost reached the point of being palpable…not just in the way one could feel the tension, this was almost so pronounced that you could reach out and touch it. His response to this frustration was to push himself harder physically. V'Kara was not sure but she was willing to wager that Shelby was in better physical shape now than when he was commander of the Marine garrison. His appetite had gotten almost problematically large, eating up to five times a day then exercising for up to seven and eight hours over the course of the day. It was relatively clear that short of cosmetic surgery, the scars from the explosion were permanent now, and he seemed to be graying at an accelerated rate, but his physique was excellent and that, at least, seemed to indicate that his health was intact.

She had begun to stretch his protein intake with beans, corn, and rice as meat was entirely too expensive considering his growing appetite. She sometimes was appalled at the fact that his diet had ballooned in calorie count, but she had to reflect on the fact that his activity level was easily four times that of a Vulcan adolescent, much less an adult and the roughly twenty six kilos of muscle he had added to his frame since being entrusted to her care just helped typify the fact.

In other areas, however, his progress was more limited. He still could not seem to manage any semblance of language. He could produce sounds, as he did even now, grunting and groaning as he pushed himself through his fifth workout of the day, but language was still failing him and it seemed that while he could understand words spoken or presented to him, he could not arrange them properly to communicate back. Several times he had attempted to use a PADD to communicate but all that was produced was gibberish, a mess of words without anything approaching reason. He had developed a series of signs and gestures that indicated certain simple concepts but V'Kara suspected he was growing more frustrated daily being trapped in his own mind.

T'Pau's absence didn't help either.

She had not visited in close to a month now, and while V'Kara never felt any threat from the Colonel, she could readily admit she lacked the calming effect on him that T'Pau seemed to produce. The minister had, fortunately, subcontracted with an agency to provide care for the Colonel four nights a standard week which allowed V'Kara some time with her family, but most of her day and that of the Colonel as well, were spent together. In fairness, barring his inability to effectively communicate, she saw no reason why he still required the supervision. He was capable of preparing his own meals, he didn't require assistance cleaning himself, he could operate most of the machinery and appliances in the house with very little trouble, and in terms of physical frailty…he was quite the opposite now, compounding the point by launching into a series of pull-ups with a pair of sand-bags hanging around his neck to provide additional weight resistance.

One of the up sides of his new self-sufficiency was that he did most of his hours upon hours of calisthenics, isometrics, and resistance training outdoors where his taste in music wouldn't serve to offend given her rather conventional and logical distaste for loud human music. The more frustrated he became, the hard he pushed his body, the harder he pushed his body, the more aggressive sounding the music he listened to became. It was none of her business, but she felt a growing concern that he might be on the verge of self-destructing.

If the minister did not visit soon, she would have no choice but to contact her and request her presence.

* * *

><p>"Hull plating at twenty seven percent!" Reed bellowed over the sounds of the alarms, sparking consoles, and atmosphere dumping from ruptured pipes.<p>

"Keep firing, Malcolm. Hoshi, send out a general distress call." Archer shouted.

"Sir, won't that just call more Xindi?" Malcolm shot back, his assertion reasonable, but at the totally wrong time.

"We have to chance it!"

Hoshi grabbed ahold of her station as another volley of fire rocked the ship, "Yes, sir. To any ship, this is NX-01 Enterprise, we are in need of assistance, we are under attack by hostile forces, situation critical!"

* * *

><p>"Sir, we are getting a distress call conforming to MCS broadcast standards emanating from the anomaly location!" Petty Officer Nadella barked.<p>

"Put it through mister Nadella." Al-Sistani intoned calmly.

"To- ship…Enterprise- need- assistance….attack by hostile-…critical!"

Trip's discipline slipped, "The hell? En'erprise? Confirm origin."

Nadella only had to glance back, "We have wave form distortion that suggest EM interference, sir…it is tunneling from the location of the anomaly."

"Could be one of those Gravimetric Distortion Fields, sir." Snellis offered.

Trip grabbed the handset for the ship's intercom, keying into 1MC, "General quarters, general quarters, all hands to stations, this is not a drill. Repeat, general quarters, general quarters, all hands to stations this is not a drill." The ship alert siren began to bray as the lights in the CIC changed to optimize visual acuity. "Mister Cotter, take us in."

"Aye aye, sir."

Electronic Warfare, Navigation, and Operations crewmen dashed over to the armor lockers and began pulling out thermo-ballistic vests and helmets to hand to the CIC/Bridge personnel as the crew shifted into battle preparedness. Even with the relative youth of this shift's crewmen, they had become very accustomed to fighting. The months in Romulan territory had trained them well…they were a well-oiled machine now, every cog interlocking as a part of the mechanism. The Charlie combat shift were kids…but they were hardened warfighters now, and Trip couldn't help but feel a bit of pride. Now to go save Jon's ass…again.

* * *

><p>"Keep broadcasting Hoshi!"<p>

"Hull plating at thirteen percent. Hull breaches on C and D decks." Malcolm shouted.

"Keep firing!" Archer howled.

"Sir, we are losing power to weapons!"

Hoshi straightened, "Captain, we're getting a signal from unknown origins."

"Not now, Hoshi!"

"You should hear this, captain!" She didn't wait for his acknowledgement; she put it over the speakers.

An inhumanly calm voice came over the speakers. "Enterprise, Enterprise, this is Tirpitz, key over to ULF and clear our firing lane, over."

"What is ULF?" Hoshi asked, as if somehow this bizarre order now superseded their eminent destruction at the hand of Xindi warships.

"What the hell is the Tirpitz?" Archer thundered, that aspect even more perplexing than orders to switch communication channels.

"Captain, I am detecting a very large craft fifty eight thousand meters to our starboard." T'Pol shouted to be heard over the noise on the bridge.

"Is it them or the aquatics?"

"Impossible to say, this craft does not match any known hull configuration we know of."

Archer crossed to her station, "Can we get it on screen?"

* * *

><p>"All ahead one third, mister Cotter." Trip barked.<p>

"Batteries three, eight, and fifteen, plot targeting solutions on the lead Xindi craft, three round burst, DeMil HE quick." Al-Sistani ordered the fire-control man with practiced ease.

"Phaser battery two, lock solutions for furthest Xindi ship and fire on my mark." Andy Snellis declared evenly.

"Sir." Petty Officer third class Delaney called out from Electronic Warfare station, "We're getting odd readings from this Enterprise, sir."

"What do you mean, miss Delaney?" Trip inquired.

"Punching it up now, sir."

Trip looked over to the holotank and saw the X-Ray tunneling scan form for the wounded ship. The damage was severe looking, too severe to have been possible with the armor and shielding on a CG boat. Then something caught his eye, on the hull designation, the letters "NX".

* * *

><p>"What the….hell is that." Archer looked at the screen mystified.<p>

White hot streaks were spearing out from three places on the huge ship, almost too fast for the eyes to register but the contrails of smoke indicating their passage. Then a salvo of phaser fire erupted from one of the dagger-like projections of the hull; two solid beams and a hail of glowing darts of energy. The nacelles looked somehow familiar, like what he would expect to see of a Earth starship, but they were huge and covered in armor, just like everything else on this ship…huge. This couldn't be human, couldn't be earth made…unless…Daniels.

"Enlarge that!" Archer shouted pointing at some lettering apparent on the saucer area of the unknown ship…another indicator that it was somehow influenced by, or following the same progression arc as human technology.

As the image enlarged and framed the section he was stunned to see the lettering…

BB-01

U.S.S. Tirpitz

"Sir, the nearest Xindi ship has been crippled." Malcolm shouted.

"Show me."

The screen switched to the Reptilian ship listing, atmosphere venting from seven holes in its hull and a trail of debris coming from where its engines had been smashed. The hull breaches looked almost like wounds, edges ripped open and torn away, not like energy weapon breaches that melted whole sections of hull. Archer felt warring sensations of vindication and disgust as he could just make out the bodies and parts of Xindi Reptilians floating slowly away from the ship as inertia continued to carry the stricken ship forward. The ship rocked suddenly, but not from weapons hit, it was almost like…

"Sir, the other Xindi ship has been destroyed." Malcolm declared with a voice that sounded suddenly drained of life.

"Sir, the other ship is hailing us again." Hoshi declared, also sounding drained.

"Put it on."

"Enterprise, Enterprise, this is Tirpitz, please confirm, do you have Ultra Low Frequency communications, over."

"Can we broadcast, Hoshi?" Archer inquired.

"Yes, sir." She replied then keyed in broadcast protocols.

"This is Enterprise, we do not have technology in place for ultra-low frequency broadcasting."

The ship rocked and shuddered as the huge warship passed over.

"Hold current position, Enterprise, we are detecting additional hostiles three point seven million kilometers distance, moving to interdict."

Archer looked over to T'Pol with a confused expression. The Vulcan science officer cocked a helpless eyebrow, "Sir that is well beyond our conventional sensor range, I cannot confirm these readings."

Before he could reply the ship shot away at full impulse.

"Sir, I am picking up human life signs on the crippled Xindi ship." T'Pol commented.

"What?" Archer walked back over to look at her console, "Are they ours?"

"Unknown, they do not conform of the life signs of any of our crew."

Archer looked at the information, seven human life signs, low heart rate, slow movement. They had to get them out of there, it was possible they were running out of air.

"Can we get a transporter lock on them?" Archer demanded.

"I believe so."

Archer ran over to his command couch, "Bridge to engineering."

"Hess here!"

Archer winced remembering what had occurred just weeks ago, "Hess, get to the transporter room, we have seven human life signs, can you beam them directly to decon?"

"I should be able too, sir."

"Do it." Archer looked up, "Malcolm, grab three MACOs and meet me at Sickbay, they might be plants."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

><p>Phlox crossed to the Decon chamber door, waiting for the seven humans that were aboard the Xindi ship to materialize. The seven forms, all partially upright began to glow into existence, the shapes coalescing into people. Phlox was too confused by what he saw next. Staring back through the window was Private Woods, one of the MACOs, but he seemed taller, more powerfully built, and his gear was completely wrong. The tight general purpose gray camouflage of the MACO uniform was now replaced with looser woodland colors; tans, browns, and greens. He wore a heavy vest with countless straps and pockets. Dark green colored grenades, and some strange rifle.<p>

The six other humans locked in on him almost as one, all similarly garbed and wearing helmets, just like Woods…or more appropriately…unlike the MACOs. He saw recognition and alarm in their eyes and before he could bring his hand up to press the key to the intercom one of them took a rocking step back and brought up a booted foot.

"Wait…wait, don't be-"

The door to decon exploded outwards, striking the opposite bulkhead as the seven human-looking…whatever they were…came rushing out of the chamber. Phlox didn't have time to say a word before one of the…whatevers…grabbed the back of his tunic, lifting him almost bodily off the ground as the pseudo-MACO planted an elbow in his back to guide him along. They moved quickly into sickbay where two of the others began to sweep the room, pulling back the curtain Phlox felt a spike of dread.

"Lieutenant…sir…" one of them said, "you need to see this."

One of the man-bear-targ soldiers walked over, his face young but his expression severe in a way Phlox was not accustomed too.

"What in the actual…" The could-be-human grunted.

The doors to sickbay opened and Phlox looked up to see Captain Archer, Malcolm Reed, and a pair of MACOs stepped just inside the door before freezing in place.

"GET ON THE GROUND!" The relatively-compact version titan behind him bellowed, his fellows taking up the call as the barrels of their weapons came up to lock on the captain and the MACOs.

Everyone was shouting now, yelling at each other, none of it seemed to make any sense anymore. Two of the humans..? had crossed to near the door with unnatural speed and had their weapons up bearing down on the quartet of verifiably human crew members. Then Kemper did something that, in retrospect, was unbelievably foolish. He fired at the god-in-man-form-for-the-day behind Phlox and then things escalated. The warp core powered man-shaped thing closest to Sergeant Kemper struck out, catching him across the forearms, knocking his phaser rifle away and audibly breaking the radius and ulna in both arms. Corproal Ryan was immediately seized by the second and launched bodily across the room as if he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes.

One of them spoke, the harsh faced youth they had referred to as 'lieutenant', "What the hell are you doing with Captain Tucker?"

Archer was frozen in place, his hands raised in a gesture that seemed to indicate that some part of him believed he could calm the situation by some messianic force of presence, "Captain Tucker? What do you mean Captain Tucker."

"Raider, Raider, this is Assassin, come back over." One of the impromptu invaders began speaking into a small device mounted near the collar of his heavy vest. He paused a moment, as a buzz could be heard emanating from his helmet near his ear.

"Raider, interrogative, status of person Tucker, Charles A, over."

He paused again, Phlox took the opportunity to turn his head to check on the quasi-invader who had been shot, shocked to see the man still standing with his weapon bearing on the Captain, Reed, and the MACOs. Kemper was groaning quietly, trying not to show weakness in the face of the pain and Corporal Ryan seemed to be unconscious in a heap where he had struck the wall hard after being tossed by one of the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Human soldiers.

Six more MACOS appeared dashing around the corner, all of them stopping dead in their tracks when the Pseudo-Woods moved forward to extend their perimeter and brought his weapon to bear on his exact…well, almost…copy in the form of MACO Private Woods.

"What the…" Kemper groaned from the floor.

"L T, the pucker factor here is getting legendary." The Quasi-Woods declared in an even tone.

"We are combat effective ROE, any of these motards twitch you have my permission to tango uniform the whole goatfuck." The young officer growled.

"Sir." The had-to-be-human, and Phlox was convinced now because only humans managed such an eclectic mix of profanity and operational language, that had been using the communication device spoke up, "Sir, orders from Sohei actual, Raider is inbound, Raider actual is requesting permission to send relief crews aboard, order as follows; stand down if practicable."

The intercom just inside the sickbay door suddenly began broadcasting, "Captain, the commanding officer of the Tirpitz requests permission for repair and medical personnel to board the ship."

"Yeah…we just found that out Hoshi." Archer declared.

The officer lowered his rifle, "Stand down, Marines."

"Captain, what should we tell them?" Hoshi inquired.

"Tell them permission is granted, I'm not sure we could survive a full-fledged boarding action."

The young Marine officer looked over to one of his men, "Jefferson, help the doctor police the casualties."

The man who had effectively crippled Kemper nodded, "Yut."

Archer hadn't even moved from his place in the sick bay door when teams of people in dark blue uniforms with black vests and helmets similar to the Marines began to beam in. Dozens, maybe even scores of them, along with them came more Marines in identical uniforms to the ones worn by the ones that had effectively captured his sick bay moments before.

The young officer who had, just moments before, been more than ready to kill or maim him and his fellows approached, "Captain Archer, sir, the skipper would like to speak to you, he is at the starboard gantry."

Archer wanted to be mad, but this was just an officer doing his duty. They had clearly boarded the Xindi ship at some point immediately following the initial firefight and had been, without warning, beamed into a strange ship, but…why would they react that way? Everyone knew what _Enterprise_ was doing out here. It also begged the question, when had Starfleet's TO&E changed so radically and why was their an effective clone of Private Woods in his sickbay now with the other Marines? They had been in the expanse for months now, but things couldn't have changed that much that quickly, could it?

Malcolm Reed was staring daggers at the young Marine lieutenant and Jon suddenly realized he needed to step in before Malcolm picked a fight he would probably lose.

"Mister Reed, you're with me."

Archer began walking briskly towards the docking hatch, not waiting for Reed who had to jog to catch up.

"Sir, we can't just-"

"Malcolm, did you see what they did to Kemper and Ryan?"

"I don't know how they managed that bloody little bit of magic but I assure you, sir that-"

"They're augments, Malcolm."

Reed frozen in his tracks, "How can you be sure?"

"Not even a Vulcan is that strong. Maybe things got worse, maybe there have been other attacks and we've gotten desperate. You saw the size of that warship; maybe they've had them in cryo sleep all these years just waiting for a situation to turn bad enough." Archer turned back and began walking towards the docking port, "Regardless, I intend to look their captain in the eye and get a straight answer."

When he reached the docking gantry there were already swarms of _Tirpitz_ crew and Marines receiving direction. One of the Marines turned and approached a tall man with his back turned, saluting as he reached him. The man wasn't wearing a helmet but had the black vest on and a pistol holstered at his thigh, he returned the salute and the Marine spoke, "CO Enterprise is here, sir."

Archer almost collapsed when the man turned.

"Hot damn…you almost look just like I remember you, Jon."

* * *

><p>T'Pol was trembling…not that anyone else would notice, but to her it felt like an earthquake coursing through her body. Her mind kept trying to convince her katra that this was <em>not<em> Trip, at least not as she knew him. He was trying to explain the utter inexplicability to Archer, and she could somehow tell that he was trying to render it as basic as possible.

"As near as I can figure, somethin' basically thinned the wall between our particular brand'a reality and yours. I'm of the opinion it was done deliberately and I aim to find out who did it 'n why." He declared, crossing the huge muscled arms that made _her_ Trip seem puny.

Her Trip…

Why had she thought of him as thus?

This example was also a few inches taller than their Trip, as a matter of fact, he seemed taller than just about everyone, except those of his own crew.

He shook his head, "Damn shame that the Xindi had to do y'all the same way they did us."

Archer swallowed, "The Xindi attacked Earth in your reality, too?"

He nodded slowly, solemnly, "Yeah…we lost forty thousand souls when their probe showed up over the Gulf."

Archer balked, squinting his eyes for a moment, "Forty…" he cleared his throat, "forty thousand?"

"Yeah…"

"We lost seven million."

T'Pol saw the tightening in his jaw and temples and could swear she saw a flicking of feral rage in his eyes, "You have my most sincere condolences, Cap'n." Was all he managed to say.

"Did you have a sister? I mean, in your universe do you have a sister?"

"Yeah…she was one of those forty thousand souls." T'Pol saw the rage momentarily replaced with unfathomable sorrow. "I guess she didn't make it here either."

"Tri-…Captain Tucker-"

"You can call me Trip if it makes you more comfortable, cap'n, I know this must be a lot to swallow, besides…I know you havin' to call me cap'n has'ta stick in your craw. I know it sure as hell did for my version of you."

"We need our Warp engines back online, we've been having major issues with them for months on and off now."

"Sure thing, who you got down in engineerin'?"

"I would appreciate it if your chief engineer could work with sub-commander T'Pol and lieutenant Hess to get things on line." Archer replied, dodging a very important detail that T'Pol believed he was remiss in failing to mention.

The new-Tucker frowned a moment, "How long have y'all been out here?"

Archer swallowed, hard, "Three years."

"What…?"

"We've been playing hide and seek with their weapon project for three years now. Every time we think we have a lead, there's nothing."

He rubbed his chin, not commenting further but T'Pol could tell something was going on in his head, "So Anna is your engineerin' division chief?"

"Currently, yes. Wait…Anna? Do you have a lieutenant Hess in your reality too?"

"Yeah, she was right under Kelby on En'erprise."

Archer furrowed a brow, "And what did you do?"

"Oh hell, Jon…I've done a bit of it all…Research and Development, Naval Special Warfare, engineerin' division chief on two boats…"

"So you were an engineer?"

He sort of smiled, not the way her-…_their_ Trip would have, but it was familiar none-the-less. "My second great love."

"I appreciate that, Captain Tuck-…Trip."

He straightened, "By your leave, sir."

"We'll make anything you need available to you." Archer replied.

With that he left the room, and T'Pol felt an unreasonable fear that somehow he would disappear and with him…

"You should have told him." T'Pol choked out.

"Told him what? That his counterpart here has been in a coma for close to three years and we've already killed a man trying to bring him back? How could we make him understand that?" Archer growled.

"They are more advanced, they might have technology that can-"

"Damnit T'Pol…he's dead, if I didn't think it would cause a mutiny I'd shut the machines off and shoot the body into the sun."

T'Pol glared at him, drawing a few deep indignant breaths, "Because he reminds you of how you've failed at the mission?"

She knew anyone would be able to notice her shaking now. Archer just glared at her, rage, hatred, and maybe just a little of something else in his eyes; it made her feel unclean. "Get out." He growled.

She left the ready room and talked through the damaged bridge area, heading for the turbolift, vaguely aware of how the repair teams from _Tirpitz_ paused a moment to watch as she passed. Trellium, she need to get to her supply. The emotions were overwhelming her now, the anger, the frustration…she didn't even notice him until his hand had closed around her arm. His other hand pulled up her sleeve, revealing the scars of repeated hypo injection had produced.

"Trellium is-tor du?"

She could not reply, she just trembled in his grasp, something about him smelling so much like their Trip…and Sim. His face was so delightfully familiar, but there was a hardness in his eyes and his words…

How could she have imagined this Tucker spoke Vulcan.

"Is-tor ri, tehvar-bosh nam-tor." He extended an admonishing finger, a gesture she knew indicated scolding for a human.

She twisted and managed to pull free, nostrils flaring as she breathed heavily, "What do you care?"

"Look at yourself, you know you're unbalanced."

How dare he! How dare a human talk about balance! Her mouth engaged before he brain could scream for a halt.

"I don't need you; I don't need your help. You just made it worse when you…" Ah, there was her brain, a little too late but, as humans always said 'better late than never'.

He leaned back against the wall, folding his arms across his chest again. "So, my counterpart here…you two were involved?"

She didn't answer, just stared, not at him but at the wall closest to him.

"You always did do that when you didn' wanna answer a question." He chuckled.

She glared at him, prompting a little smile, his face uncharacteristically open based on what she had seen of this version of Charles Tucker III, it was almost like he knew what was going to happen, to be said, "And my 'counterpart' as you put it, you knew her?"

"Oh yes." He replied, mumbling to himself, "in the biblical sense."

"I do not know where you are from, but you are not Trip, I do not trust you."

He arched a brow at her, "Trip, huh?"

"Commander Tucker." She spat back.

His face became serious again, "You haven't meditated in over a week have you, and I bet yer sleep deprived."

She opened her mouth to retort but closed it.

"Turn around." He ordered.

"What?"

"Just do it, darlin'."

She wasn't sure why, but she complied, turning to face the wall of the turbolift some inexplicable stab of anticipation crawling over every inch of her body. She felt his fingers touching her, larger, stronger than Sim's or her Trip's, but there was something familiar in the touch. She took a deep breath, and then felt the pressure being applied to the small of her back though the uniform. The tension seemed to immediately drain down through her legs and into the floor, her knees almost went out; it felt so good. She gasped but before she could recover she already felt his fingers pinching into the nodes in her clavicle, the pressure coming quick and even. It was almost as if all popped, the accumulated body-bound stress reactions escaping down her arms and out her fingers. She wanted to ride the current of release, feeling a wave of delicious warmth in her stomach, the feeling she had with Sim when… But his fingers were already beneath her jaw now, pressing at the points just below her ears, her neck craned as she felt the pressure pushing the neural nodes to release. She had to grab the railing to keep from falling. Her chest was heaving, skin flushed, prickling in her scalp and down her arms. She turned around, ready to pounce, to take him, just like…

"Raider six, raider six, this is actual, come back, over."

"This is six, actual, send traffic."

"Raider six, request status Echo Papa Sierra infrastructure, over."

She took a step forward, she would deprive him of the communication device first, then take what she needed from him. He held up a hand for her to wait, seeming marginally agitated she was trying to interrupt.

"Actual, status Echo Papa Sierra indicates six four percent systemic failure, monkey and football, current system structure will not support required stress, over."

"I copy, six, permission to begin fabrication, how copy?"

"Solid copy, wilco actual, will proceed with fabrication, over."

"Copy that, Actual out." He looked at her, brows furrowing, disapproval creasing his forehead, "I know what that expression means, don' even think about it. Go to your quarters, get a few hours sleep, you're 'bout worthless like this. Meet me in engineerin' at 1945."

She just stared, head cocked forward slightly, breathing heavily, skin flushed.

"I mean it." His voice held a menacing edge, "An' if you're that wound up, you might wanna go ahead and take care of that manually, 'cause yer barkin' up the wrong tree if you think I'm gonna help you with it."

She took another step forward, testing the boundaries and was shocked when three fingers pressed against her chest just below her right clavicle and forced her back. She tried to push forward but could not move, it felt like she was being pinned in place with bulkhead reinforcements.

"I mean it!" He admonished in a firm tone.

"Nash'veh guv-tvi-rivak."

There was a sudden pressure from the three fingers slamming her back into the wall, "Go to your quarters, right now."

"Sarlah du."

"I'm married, T'Pol." He replied in an exasperated tone, "Now go get some sleep and straighten yerself out!"

He exited the lift, moving quickly and something in his demeanor suggesting that it would be foolish to attempt to pursue him further. Four years ago this kind of behavior wouldn't have even been something she would consider; never would she have thrown herself at him. Even if she had been in Plak-Tau she would have been able to refrain, well, probably not…but she used to like to think she had that kind of control. Now all she could think about was how badly she wanted Trip…a Trip…any Trip with her again, touching her the way he did, making her feel so perfectly nervous and at ease at the same time. This was, apparently, not that Trip. She couldn't even begin to phase him, but there was something in his eyes that seemed off to her.

Rest…yes rest would be nice.

And maybe his suggestion about 'manual' release would be heeded, even she had to occasionally avail herself of that option courtesy of the Trellium that had all but destroyed all of her reserve. Maybe this Trip would finally end the nightmare.

* * *

><p>He had been right, it was maddening that he…as irrational as he…<em>her<em> he, anyway, was…he had been right. Sleep had come in the wake of the release, overtaking her before the sexual frustration could spike enough to steel the promise of rest away. His touch though…it haunted her dreams as she remembered Sim, what she had done to him, what he had done to her…after the surgery failed there had been little they could do. His last weeks of life had been spent with him trying, desperately at times, to wring the full measure of life from them. All beings were technically dying, he just knew with haunting clarity how imminent his demise was. But it wasn't just Sim…it was Trip too, everything that made Sim, Sim, was what made Trip, Trip.

This Charles Anthony Tucker III though was like a bad joke or an insult. It was there in all their faces, a stark reminder of what they no longer had. She wanted him because he was at least _something_ like the ones she had lost, but the very fact he was like what she had lost is what made her hate him. He was working diligently when she reached engineering. Her Trip had always had an excellent physique as humans went, strong in all the ways he should be, lean where it was befitting, but this Trip…

Even with the uniform jacket on she could see his wide shoulders, broad chest, and the powerful muscled arms. His hair was shorter, but the same golden shade and his eyes still pierced her in all the right _and_ wrong ways. But he didn't even seem to care that she had entered engineering…

He was humming to himself softly, "Got some sleep? Good, you can start workin' with Anna on resetting the core's firmware."

He hadn't even looked up, how had he known? Peripheral vision, that had to be it, he had seen her out of the corner of his eye. Without another word he went back to humming.

"The waves…suck you in, and you drown. If like you'd…just stay down with me, I'll swim down…with you…you." He was softly reciting in a strange halting sing-song as his fingers flew over the keys on one of the Engineering consoles.

"You hang the anchors, over my…neck. I liked it at first, but the more you laughed, the crazier…I became. The waves…suck you in, and you drown. If like you'd…just stay down with me, I'll swim down…with you. Is that what you want? With you….Is that what you want?" He kept singing to himself, confident that the noise wasn't drawing undue attention to himself or, perhaps, simply not caring. She tried not to be obvious, but she couldn't help, cutting her eyes back over to him over and over, accomplishing little. Something about the voice seemed beautiful, perhaps it was just who was doing the singing. Her Trip…their Trip, and Sim, neither ever sung that she knew of. This one clearly did and it, strangely, seemed to set him apart even more than his enhanced physique and personality did.

"If like you'd, just stay down with me….I'll swim down…with you, is that what you want? With you, is that what you want? With you….you."

"Damnit!"

Hess's outburst cut him off, he turned to look over to the core and the scaffolding that provided access to the drive control array.

"What's the pro'lem lieutenant?"

Anna lifted her hands in a defeated gesture, staring down at the rows of figures on the portable screen that was attached to the drive control systems firmware. "I can't figure out these compression ratios on the intermix."

He almost grinned, "Oh c'mon…just a bit'a calculus."

"Try fifth year Calculus…it would take a day to get these equations even plugged into a solver, much less doing it in my head!" Hess complained, her words with a mildly accusatory edge. People didn't seem to know what to make of this Tucker, and he served as a palpable reminder that their Tucker was little more than an empty husk with a heartbeat.

"C'mon, Anna, I know you've got the know-how."

She glared back, "Maybe yours did, and I bet she was tall blond and looked like an underwear model too, but I'm not that Anna Hess."

Captain Tucker bobbed his brows, "Honestly, there ain't a lick'a difference as near as I can tell, you even complain and say you can't do things you can do the same way…"

"Lieutenant Hess has a point, these are complex and sophisticated equations and the check-sum process checks out to the ten millionth place." T'Pol countered, some of her control clearly having returned courtesy of the rest facilitated by his impromptu neuropressure, but now she had a heavy streak of sexual tension running that made her feel something she still shouldn't be feeling; resentment.

"Okay, fine…you two win. What's the intermix you're lookin' at right now?"

"Warp four point nine." Hess declared, folding her arms in a challenging way.

The other-Tucker rolled his eyes upwards, his mouth moving slightly as he mentally calculated. T'Pol was about to suggest that stabs of bravado accomplished nothing when he spoke.

"Channels up, twenty seven point four eight eight three one niner five millipascals, channels down thirty one point three seven one eight one niner four. Plug it and run it."

Hess did as she was bade, her expression, tongue shoved into the fold of her lower lips seeming to indicate she was certain it was wrong and wanted the vindication of pointing out the errors with the system rejected the updates.

T'Pol decided to intercede, or, rather, use the opportunity to scold the pseud-Trip for his hubris, "You cannot possibly have calculated such complex equations in your head. It is outside the scope of possibility even for a Vulca-"

The Core interface beeped as the uploaded compression ratio sets passed the check-sum and were accepted as a new standard set in the firmware.

T'Pol snapped her head towards the core, "The figures were accepted?"

Hess shrugged, a mystified expression on her face, "Yeah…it did."

"Clearly the firmware must be damaged, verify the path." T'Pol insisted.

"Does it really both you that much, me bein' right?" _their_ Tucker inquired as he went back to building his program set.

"I do not believe you are right or even particularly lucky, the system is likely damaged."

He shrugged, "If you think that then just go 'head and plug in a random nine figures and see what happens."

Hess spoke up before T'Pol could retort, "Okay, let's see what you get for warp five then."

He turned back again, "Why not jump right up to six five?"

"Six point five? Are you crazy? Even the Vulcans are just barely managing six point five!" Hess crowed.

"What, really?" Tucker furrowed his brow, an expression of shocked distaste on his face.

Hess turned fully to pace him, arms akimbo and feet spread in a defiant contrapposto, "Oh yeah? And I bet you guys are running warp seven!"

"On a slow day, yeah…my reactor and engines are rated at eight point one and I've pushed 'em to eight point six three." He put his hands behind his head and laced his fingers, stretching as he did so in a way that excentuated the broadness of his chest and the thickness of his arms, "And warp five is gonna be channels up, twenty six point five one one four niner seven one…down thirty two point four six niner one eight seven six."

"You run warp eight?" Rostov asked with a mesmerized expression.

"A dubious claim, at best." T'Pol quipped.

"Bull! I'll believe it when I see it!" Hess crowed again. T'Pol suspected it was a case of 'girls stick together' especially in the face of the recent proxy for one who both had, possibly, harbored some sort of romantic feelings for.

He shrugged, "Can we focus on the job, please? Twenty six point five one one four niner seven one, up…thirty two point four six niner one eight seven six, down."

Hess sighed and punched in the numbers, once again the computer let out a single happy beep, accepting the figures verified by the check-sum.

"Lieutenant, go to the figures for warp two and input nine numbers at random, this will show that there is a malfunction in the firmware." T'Pol ordered, she was going to settle this right here and now.

The bray from the computer snatched her attention back before she could give fake-Trip the condescending look she was planning so carefully. The portable screen flashed a red error message. Incompatible Threshold; this engine is not designed to function with this compression ratio. She leaned in, altering the numbers slightly to be more in line with what would actually be used at Warp 2, satisfied that her figures were significantly close enough to the actual numbers necessary she entered the figures for check-sum. The error alarm squawked again, the same message displayed as before. T'Pol frowned slightly, inputting the correct original figures and, for some illogical reason, hoping they would show up as incorrect too. She pressed the execution key harder than was necessary and then…

It beeped cheerfully, figures accepted…numbers on point…

He

Was

Right

She looked from the screen to her figures, back to the screen and where the numbers he had plucked from the ether sat in green check-sum verified compression figure boxes. She felt the anger spike, she looked back again and he was smiling blithely.

"You were sayin'?"

* * *

><p><strong>[! Author's Note !]<strong>

**Just to clarify, the NX-01 _Enterprise_ referred to in this chapter follows all the normal conventions of the primary universe depicted in the series. This is NOT the CGX-01 _Enterprise_ despite Trip's initial belief that it might be.**


	46. Chapter 46

"I do not find the idea of working with _their_ Commander Tucker agreeable." T'Pol declared hands clamped behind her back staring at the back wall of the Captain's ready room.

"Captain."

"I do not find the idea of working with their Commander Tucker agreeable, _captain_."

Archer shook his head slowly, "No, T'Pol…what I meant was that _he_ is Captain Tucker…not a commander." Archer leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with his left hand; this whole thing was a headache that just wouldn't go away. "Why don't you want to work with him?"

"It is not a matter of personal desire."

"I know better than that." He snapped, "Look, I know it's hard…I mean with our Trip down in sickbay wasting away like-"

"He is arrogant." She cut him off.

He looked at her with tired eyes, smiling weakly. "So was ours."

"I believe there is a large portions of the engineering and operations staff that are finding his presence distracting. The ability set of humans from their realm of existence is…disturbing."

"So, you're having an emotional reaction?"

She fixed him with the Vulcan equivalent of a glare but said nothing else; a sure indicator that he had hit the nail on the head. If he could be honest with himself he knew he was having strange emotional reactions to seeing this version of his friend…that was precisely why he had been avoiding him. Something about it all just seemed all wrong, what kind of universe did these people come from? What had conditioned them this way? What had gone so horribly wrong? This might be the time to find out, if nothing else there might be something resembling catharsis of getting talk to _a_ Trip…_any_ Trip, again. He stood up looking at his science officer who had gone back to looking at the wall, refusing to meet his gaze again.

"I'm going to go talk to him, maybe he can send over someone that won't be a bitter reminder for everyone."

T'Pol followed him out of the ready room and returned to her station as he made his way for the Turbolift, "T'Pol, you have the bridge."

What could he do? Just talk to him, he was still a human…at least he thought he was. He felt a chill go up his spine as he remembered the porthole to Decon and how the door had been kicked off its track. The strength necessary to do so was well beyond the standards for…well…just about anything he could think of; the way they had dispatched the two MACOs, the fact that a stun blast from a phaser rifle had done absolutely nothing to one. This Tucker, at least, seemed to recognize him, maybe he had a counterpart over in their universe, hell, maybe their Archer was friends with their Tucker. He hoped that was the case and he could leverage that to actually talk to this Tucker man to man. When he approached engineering he saw him standing outside the hold with two of their soldiers, both clad in the same camouflage clothing with body armor, load bearing equipment, and weapons. The two soldiers had their helmets removed and were talking with Tucker. One was the lieutenant they had experienced the unfortunate run-in with after beaming his squad over, the other was a slightly older but still young Asian man, his expression severe.

"Pro'lem I'm havin' right now is yer justification lieutenant." Tucker explained in an even tone.

Archer noticed they all had name tags, embroidered on cloth attached to their uniforms and equipment. The young lieutenant was Pritchard, Tucker was…predictably, Tucker, and the Asian man was Musashibo. Clearly Pritchard was being called to task over his actions in the sickbay.

"Sir, when we materialized in their decontamination room I was immediately aware of the fact that it was not MCS design, sir. The benches, bulkhead fittings, and markings did not conform to accepted MCS design, it was that point I realized this was not CGX zero one, sir."

Tucker glanced over to Musashibo then back to the lieutenant. "So it was your belief that this ship was an imposter and that it constituted a tactical situation?"

"Aye, sir. And, sir, from our previous experience with CGX zero one, I realized that the Doctor Phlox we were being presented with was no less than fourteen kilograms heavier than…" he hunted for the correct word, "ours, sir. Similarly his hair was about five centimeters longer."

Tucker almost cracked a grin, "People grow out their hair, son."

"It was my belief at the time that our Doctor Phlox's hair style constituted a personal style choice and would not have been something readily altered, similarly the weight gain was unusual given Denobulan metabolic rates, sir."

Tucker looked back at the Asian man, "Thoughts, major?"

"I don't see anything to indicate that the LT should not have construed the situation as combat effective, sir." Musashibo replied.

"Fair 'nuff. My report will reflect that you were reactin' to a possible combat situation and you and your men reacted judiciously, lieutenant. I know there are alotta Marines that might've gotten spooked and opened fire." Tucker declared evenly. "Unless you have anythin' else, Major…?"

Major Musashibo shook his head, as if Tucker was appraising a prize hunting dog.

"Very well, yer dismissed lieutenant, carry on."

The young officer snapped to attention, "Aye aye, sir."

From where he stood Archer could see the major fighting down a smirk, as the lieutenant turned and began walking away, pulling an eight point cap from a pocket similar to the ones Archer had seen in old pictures of United States Marines from centuries past and began down the corridor away from them.

"Oh c'mon…watcha grinnin' about? I know Pritchard is a good kid."

Musashibo's face looked like it was about to physically crack open, "We sure could have used someone like him on Vulcan."

Tucker smirked, "He might'a stole your thunder."

The major shrugged, "He's good, but I'm better, sir. But you know…if we'd had a few more hard chargers like that, we might not have lost as many boys as we did on Vulcan."

Tucker ran a hand through his hair, "That's just gonna keep comin' back to haunt us, isn't it?"

"I figured you'd know that better than anyone, sir. It wasn't your first war."

"Yeah…" Tucker said nothing else.

"By your leave?"

"Yeah, go ahead, I figured you'd wanna have a talk with Hayes, based on what we just saw they're gonna need every hand they can to beat the Xindi."

"Yut." Musashibo turned and left following Pritchard down the same corridor.

Archer approached slowly as Tucker stood in place staring at the floor for a moment, arms akimbo as if contemplating something very deeply. The mention of Vulcan bothered him, what had happened on Vulcan? Who had been responsible? If they had, their universe had, annexed Vulcan, conquered it and killed its people he didn't want them on his ship. He had no love for Vulcan, but to do that…

"What happened on Vulcan?" Archer found himself asking before he could even make an appropriate salutation.

Tucker looked up, "Huh? Oh...Vulcan." he sighed, "It was 'bout two years ago…a Romulan armada laid siege to the planet. We had a garrison there, part of an agreement we'd had with 'em since around 2110. I had to jump into the theatre to deal with a technical issue and was there for the whole month long siege before we gotta task group together to break their blockade."

"Oh." Jon couldn't say anything else.

"We had maybe 'bout twenty seven hundred Marines planet-side against somethin' to the tune of a hundred sixty thousand Romulans. We were pretty much out fightin' 'em at every turn, but there's only so much you can do with those kinda numbers."

Archer didn't want to hear anymore, he was certain it was a horrible story and one that was painful for him, "Captain…"

"Jon, you can call me Trip." He paused.

He didn't want too, it was still too raw for him. "We've had some complaints among the engineering crew about your approach."

"I guess I did raz Anna a bit about doin' the Calculus in her head." He shrugged.

"What's going on between you and T'Pol?"

Tucker frowned, "Was there somethin' goin' on between your Trip and T'Pol?"

"It's kind of a touchy subject on our end. I think it's clear though that there are some issues involving adjustment regarding your presence. It's kind of hard for everyone since our Trip…" He didn't finish.

"Alright Jon, I'm gonna show you somethin'. I want to say right here though, I am not allowin' any of it to compromise my behavior as an officer." He reached into the top pocket of his uniform blouse and pulled out a flexible LED display, handing it over to this-version Archer.

Archer took the image, looking at it with what was barely contained surprise. "This…"

The image had been taken by his mother towards the end of the family reunion on the first night. Solan had managed to get himself thoroughly worn out. He had managed to make his way over to the swing on which T'Pol was sitting with Trip and climbed up onto their laps under the watchful oversight of his grandfather. He nestled into place between mother and father and proceeded to fall asleep. T'Pol was still leaning against Trip whose left arm was still wrapped around her. Elaine Tucker had managed to capture an image of both parents looking down at their child who was peacefully snoozing across their laps. Before _Tirpitz_ had left Earth orbit, she had sent the picture to her son.

"In my reality, T'Pol 'n I have a child together. We've been together comin' up on four years now."

Archer couldn't find words. T'Pol's indiscretions with Sim were not widely known, in point of fact it was only himself and Phlox among the crew that were aware that anything had gone on. It extended beyond comfort for a man who, by all rights, lived too short a life…she had clearly felt passionately about Sim and the being for whom he had been proxy. To learn that there was something cyclical about it, something seemingly inevitable about the course of action served to disturb more than reassure Archer.

"Sometimes…Jon, fate or God or whatever is just gonna draw two people together regardless of the circumstances."

Archer stumbled over his next words, "So…basically…"

"She wants me to be a surrogate that I simply can't be." He concluded, folding his arms across his chest.

"It's not my place, but if it would help her get her head back in the game, couldn't you-"

"No…I couldn', I'm married to _my_ T'Pol, not yours."

Archer shook his head, flustered by the ramifications of it all, "It wouldn't even be like you were cheating."

"Yeah, yeah it would."

Archer lowered his head, then looked back up with eyes that looked impossibly tired, on the verge of breakdown, ready to give over to frustrated tears at any moment, "It's been so hard out here, all these years, trying to track down the Xindi, trying to stop whatever was going to happen from happening. The only way we know for certain that there still is an earth is everything once and a while a message gets through."

Tucker turned and leaned back against the bulkhead, looking across the corridor at the opposite side. "When they attacked in our reality, we sortied three task groups to huntin' 'em down and eliminatin' the threat. We didn't pull our punches, ran in with guns blazin'. By the time it was over with all but four of the original fifteen ships had been forced to retreat back to friendly space. We didn' attempt stealth from the jump. So I know skulkin' around here has been a pain for you. But I have reason to believe that whatever they're up to right now isn' meant to do y'all in."

"What do you mean?"

"They got really desperate there for a while. They were developin' gene-selection bio weapons, high-powered nuclear devices, more of the attack spheres. Hell, at one point they'd even worked out a massive polonium bomb designed to aerosolize fifty eight tons of the stuff into the atmosphere to kill everyone from heavy metal poisonin' then let genetic stagnation finish off whatever was left." Tucker began to explain, remembering some of the dark machinations the Xindi in his reality had devised. "But they weren't callin' the shots…it was the sphere builders that were doin' it."

"The Temporal Cold War." Archer let it slip, so tired, so exhausted that it came out without even thinking.

"Somethin' is goin' on between the various layers of reality we all occupy, and I'm of the opinion that whoever is pullin' the strings has a bigger fish to fry…and that fish is my universe."

"What is about your reality that makes it more important?" Archer found himself a little offended at the assertion.

"I wouldn' say important…just more of a threat to them that wanna manipulate things. "

"Why?"

Tucker pushed off from the bulkhead, "You have to kinda have an idea that we constitute a greater strategic threat."

"Why exactly is your universe…the way it is?"

Tucker looked down the corridor, "I don't suppose there's somewhere I could get a cuppa coffee is there?"

Archer nodded, "The drink dispensers are probably still working."

"Okay, I'll explain it on the way…or at least what I can explain without a major strategic breach or screwin' with reality too much more than I already have."

* * *

><p>"Why do you think they're still using ballistic chemical propellant weapons?" Reed leaned across the table whispering to Hayes, eyeing the trio of Marines across the galley handing out emergency Humanitarian Daily Rations to the <em>Enterprise<em> crew from a crate. The Marines, uniformly, wore a grim countenance, the green and tan shades of their camouflage seeming ridiculously out of place on a starship.

"I'd say technological impairment but if what I'm hearing is true there is nothing wrong with their technology base." Major Hayes commented as he opened the heavy plastic bag the HDR they had given him was contained in.

All three of the Marines fixed their gaze at the table for a moment before returning their attention to their task at hand. It was almost as if they had heard every word said, but that couldn't have been possible, not even Vulcans had ears that good.

"You think they heard us?" Reed inquired.

"Sure seemed that way. "

"I really don't like it, they almost don't seem human." Reed complained quietly, "What they did in sick-bay, the way they just seemed to shrug everything off, it's not…human."

"What do the sensors report?"

"The scans commander T'Pol performed before we beamed them over indicated they were human, but something about them is just…off."

The doors to the galley slid open and two more Marines walked in, both removing the caps from their heads as they did so, helmets clutched under their respective left arms and their rifles clapping against their load bearing equipment. The Asian man on the right being just slightly shorter than the other but both with a clear height advantage over most of _Enterprise's _ crew. The Asian man had an oak leaf insignia on his battle vest while his companion only had a single bar, both embroidered in black thread on a simple square patch. They approached the table then stopped in place.

"Major Hayes, Lieutenant Reed, I'm Major Musashibo Benkei, fifth battalion, second Marine Special Operations Regiment, and this is first Lieutenant Nathan W. Pritchard…" The Asian man stated.

"Second platoon, kilo company, five two m-soar." The rigid young man declared.

"We've been instructed by Captain Tucker to provide logistical and training support for your military operations contingent." Musashibo finished.

Reed drew himself up straighter, bristling in that uniquely Anglo way at the assertion that anything about _Enterprise_ and her crew required improvement, "I am not sure there is anything that can be taught to the major and his men, they are exceptionally skilled as is."

Musashibo cut eyes over to Pritchard for a moment, who simply blinked in response to the unspoken cue on the part of his commanding officer.

"With all due respect to the Major and his men's abilities…being well versed in special operations procedure isn't going to be enough, you need to be war fighters too and the way I understand it, your people haven't done much in the way of fighting wars since the early twenty first century."

"And you have?" Reed scoffed.

"Sir, Eugenics wars from twenty sixteen to twenty thirty four, Coffee wars in twenty thirty one, Transvaal incident in twenty thirty two, first Cote d'Ivoire uprising in twenty thirty nine, The Singh coupe attempt in twenty forty one, Bakufu rebellion in twenty forty five, first Terra Novan rebellion in twenty sixty eight, second Terra Novan rebellion in twenty seventy two…" Pritchard began reciting the events and dates as if it had all been drilled into his head.

"That's good lieutenant, I think they get the point." Musashibo declared, he speared the two men at the table, men he had to remind himself that he didn't know, at least not in this reality, "Look, I haven't got any skin in this game. The skipper could pull us all back on board and take off without a second thought and just flatten any Xindi structure over six inches high to make sure that whatever pulled us over into your universe can't come over into ours. But he's an alright guy, probably too nice considering what he's been through, and he wants us to play ball, so this is your one chance to learn from your betters."

Hayes remained quiet but Reed was clearly bristling at the assertion.

"Make no mistake gentleman, I could pit the lieutenant here against any six of your best men and it would take him about thirty seconds to finish the fight…and I've got eight NCOs that could do the same to him…and I could do the same to them. And I hear tell that Captain Tucker is even better than that, so do you want to be force multipliers or do you want to spend another three years trying to complete the mission?"

* * *

><p>"I don't know how it must have gone for your people, Jon…but we fought the Augments tooth and nail for nearly thirty years. It was a war that ate one hundred fifty eight million people in the worst way imaginable. They didn't wanna start a nuke war, they were gonna lose that in the worst way possible, so it was all just grindin' the grist and chemical weapons and conventional bombs." Tucker laced his fingers together. "They were beatin' us pretty bad for a while…they thought nothin' of throwin' conscript armies out there. They'd launch two hun'erd strategic bombers in a single day at a single city. We could shoot down two thirds of 'em and we'd still be looking close to two hundred tons'a ordnance being plastered across a major metropolitan center. They'd pepper a few aerosol dispersion containers of soman, tabun, VX, sarin, or the like in there too just to push that body count up."<p>

Archer didn't nod, didn't really want to know anymore. The Eugenics war had been something of a broad obscuration in his reality, mostly because there hadn't been enough left after the war and the purges, and the dozens of little civil wars to keep an accurate record. He wasn't even sure what all of this had to do with what made them so…different. And it was almost as if this Tucker could sense that he was losing him.

"Long story short, we decided if we couldn' beat 'em…we'd join 'em." Tucker paraphrased, "ninety nine percent of humans in my reality are augmented by direct genetic-retrovirus rewrite or by dint of inheritin' it from their parents as part'a their genetic code. We've gotta complex hierarchy of phenotypes and retrovirus generation but that'd take me the be'er part of'a month t' 'splain. Guess you could say, we force evolved, Jon. We met the Vulcans in the mid twenty forties and have been in space ever since."

"So," Archer swallowed, "your reality got lucky."

Tucker cocked his head to the side, furrowing his brow, "There ain't no such thing, Jon. It all happens th'way it happens. Call it whatcha want it, but I don't kin to the idea that the almighty plays favorites."

Archer looked directly into the mirror-Trip's eyes, eyes rimmed in red and showing signs of frustrated tears, "Can you help us? I'm drowning here, Trip. I don't know how much longer-"

One of Tucker's hands clamped firmly on his shoulder, "It's alright Jon, we're not goin' anywhere, we're gonna get you clear of this."

"Thank you."

"Have you had any contact with Earth?" Trip didn't want to ask, but he had to know.

"We've put up defensive screens, but as of the last report a month ago, there was still no sign of Xindi activity outside the expanse, so at least there is that." Archer replied, a slight hitch in his breathing indicating he was trying to fight down desperate, frustrated, sobs.

Tucker nodded, to himself, "That'd fit with my theory that they're usin' this reality as a stagin' area."

"I still can't grasp how dangerous that ship of yours is…" Archer shook his head.

"Jon…when you…our, you…was leadin' Task Force Saber against the Xindi where I come from, En'erprise went toe t'toe with five reptilian ships in one engagement and we sunk 'em all. We've gotta martial bent in our universe, borrowin' from the old breed. Ain't a damn thing I could do there I couldn't do on this boat, but I'm pretty sure you don't want that. Seems like y'all came up believin' in the idea of exploration for peaceful purposes, God bless ya for that, so I'm not gonna compromise your beliefs by turnin' this ship into a gun boat."

Archer chuckled, "I was a bit worried about that, there wasn't really anything I could do to stop you and honestly, if you had, it probably would have been in our best interests."

Tucker grinned back, "Hell, the real reason is I don't want any of our super-secret advanced tech goin' to the rabble."

Archer chuckled again. "Are we this close in your universe."

Tucker's grin faded, his eyes shifting off and away, "We were."

"What happened?"

He looked back the simulacrum of his Archer, "T'Pol…"

"Really…?"

"You…he…had a point, I was breakin' regs, and I sorta suspect he was holdin' a candle for her despite Erika…but it was just ugly for a while there."

"Erika…Hernandez?"

"Yep."

"I'm…with her, there…in your universe?"

Tucker let out a rattling chuckle, "Not sure your definition of 'with' but there has been somethin' going on between you two…them two…for years now. She's XO of En'erprise over there…a damn fine officer. Y'all…they…they always keep it professional, but you just sorta get the feelin' that there's somethin' more there."

The communication device clipped to the pocket on his blouse pocket prompted Trip to interrupt the conversation, "Raider actual, raider actual, this is Sohei actual, come back, over."

"Actual, send traffic Sohei." He replied with a sort of practiced manner that seemed to indicate he had been thoroughly ensconced in this martial life.

"Raider, requesting your presence for micmap training with local forces."

"Sohei, interrogative, is there personnel with the require proficiency to complete the training?"

There was a pause then a sound like a chuckle through the communication device, "I think you might be able to surprise a few folks, Raider."

"Roger that, Sohei," Tucker stood, draining what was left of the mug of coffee, "I am underway now, Raider, out." Tucker looked over to this Jonathan Archer, "Duty calls, John, I'll be sure'n not t'hurt anyone."

* * *

><p>"This was an utterly unseen series of events, our scrutiny of that reality schema is limited."<p>

"Then you should have taken an approach of increased field agent observation! Our job is to know what is unknown and see what is unseen, not to just wait for the chips to fall then figure out how to damage control the problem!" Daniels roared back at his Romulan counter-part in contradiction to his reputation for almost comatose levels of detachment.

Sivik, by comparison, remained adequately dour and composed, a bit of a marvel given the usual disposition of Romulans, "It has been our policy to avoid contact with theta zero three eleven whenever possible, given the unique situation in that universe it was reasonable to expect that protracted active observation would have been detected and the agents killed as perceived threats."

"They didn't have to be emplaced on Earth!" Daniels fired back.

Sivik looked at Daniels dispassionately, "As theta zero three one one's case officer, I am privy to the intelligence gathering and counter-espionage apparatus currently in place in that reality schema. Earth has eyes and ears everywhere, the only options to infiltration would be with parties currently being manipulated by other temporal factions which would place our agents at even higher risk of being compromised with far greater deleterious effects upon that eventuality."

A slight hiss cut off any further retort just as the vocador began projecting, "That is enough."

Both turned to look at the hulking Gorn matriarch where she sat behind her massive desk, her clawed fingers laced together and what could seem to be a thoughtful expression on the giant reptilian moue. A grunt from her throat started the universal translation vocador working again, the voice unnaturally human and feminine sounding when taken in the context of the half-ton reptile using it, "Sivik does have a higher level of awareness of the vagaries of this particular reality plane to which we are referring and given his protracted service as chief case officer for it, I have to conclude that his observations regarding operational security are correct."

Daniels nodded, "Yes, ma'am."

"Gentlemen," she continued, "I fear the issue here is one that is uniquely mammalian, your inclination is to act where a position of 'wait and see' might be preferable."

Sivik bowed his head, "We all know that the Gorn have a far longer view than most other species, director."

She let out a trilling screech, a sound they had come to know as amusement even though the vocador still seemed incapable of appropriate quantification, "Mister Sivik, don't you know to never remind a woman of her age?"

Sivik smirked slightly, "I thought that was a mammalian failing."

The screech punctuated the room once again, "I dropped my last egg eighty three years ago, the dynamic is fairly universal."

Daniels smiled in spite of himself, "As you say, ma'am."

"Now, if we are done with recrimination, what findings have we reached?" Thr'ksss inquired, as she leaned back in the chair designed to handle her eight feet of height and the mammoth muscle and bone of her race.

"Right now, it would appear that certain factions are beginning the full press against theta zero three one one, for what reasons we cannot be entirely sure." Sivik supplied evenly.

"I think it is easy to surmise the reasoning," Thr'ksss admonished in her even tone, rendered even more so by the translator affixed to her throat, "They are exhibiting a level of technological advancement that will place them outside of the window of plausible manipulation by the mid twenty second century thanks, in no small part, to Earth's progression arch. Technologically speaking they will be sitting at twenty fourth century level of technology and advancement by the early twenty second century and by the time the standard continuity arch prescribes interaction with extant factions from the gamma and delta quadrants they will have them technologically and militarily so completely out-striped that their meta-governmental organs of state will have almost complete hegemonic control of the galaxy by the early twenty six century. In such an event, they will be more than capable of beginning their own manipulations as a temporal faction to ensure the stability of their reality schema. As it exists in the current time line, we are already having to give them assurances to prevent more overt action on their part."

That was true enough…the data raid had only been three short weeks ago, teams from the theta zero three one one Federation's intelligence and counter-intelligence branch had remotely cracked into their databases and dumped massive amount of information about what they knew about the temporal cold war and the factions involved in the rest of the pan-schema reality curve. Thr'ksss had been forced to personally travel into the reality schema to make assurances and provide evidence of their faction's over-arching desire to minimize outside influence which, included, their own. Since then the director had demonstrated a profound level of disquiet even if her overt behavior suggested nothing of the sort.

"Mister Sivik, who is your acting point of contact for theta?" The Gorn inquired, she of course knew, but part of the trouble shooting process was to go over the details, looking for options previously overlooked.

"Agent T'Var." Sivik supplied.

"And you specific reasons for choosing agent T'Var were?"

"The individual we have observed that sits most often at the vertices of schema shifts is theta's Charles Anthony Tucker the third." The Romulan answered.

"And the choice of a Vulcan agent was…?" Even with her encyclopedic knowledge and startling capacity for recall, the Gorn director seemed at an immediate loss to the significance.

"Agent T'Var is ancestrally part human, her human fore-father was Charles A. Tucker the third from Mister Daniels' reality schema. It was our judgment that Tucker would be more amenable to interacting with a schema generic descendent rather than a stranger."

Thr'ksss' massive brow ridges furrowed and wrinkled, "Have you made this revelation to him? It could be disruptive."

"Not as of yet, but Tucker did seem to be positively disposed towards her. Think of it, to borrow the human term, as an ace up our sleeve."

Thr'ksss' huge clawed hand came up to rub against the thick dermal plates and spines running down the back of her neck from the top of her skull. "What is agent T'Var's disposition towards the primary, in that case?"

"They are…" he took a deep breath, "conflicted. I have been attempting to counsel the agent in this regard, but I believe there are certain issues that are best resolved through individual introspection."

The Gorn nodded, "Very well, give her two weeks leave but advise her she must be prepared for immediate deployment upon her return. We must stress to her that she figure out a resolution for this…" she looked for a correct word, one that was species sensitive given the agent to whom it referred but found none adequate, "emotional…reservation."

Sivik nodded, "As you say, director."

The Gorn nodded, "Now then…Daniels…what in the name of the egg mother has Archer been doing in that reality schema…?"

Daniels arched his brows in exasperation, "Ma'am, I'm just as confused as to what is going on as you are…"

* * *

><p>T'Pol looked around the grounds of the Annapolis Naval Academy appraisingly. Ancient buildings formed the core of the academic institution, preserving the historical integrity of the United States' naval tradition in the decidedly new and dynamic environment of Military Command Starfleet. It was meant to instill a sense of tradition and pride in the officer candidates that attended the institution and served to help drill in the concepts of discipline, pride, and integrity almost by the force-of-will the buildings seemed to demonstrate. It was in stark contrast to the technologically sophisticated special applications annex where the electronic warfare and stellar cartography courses were taught. Those buildings demonstrated the modernity of MCS and the skill set officers and officer candidates were instructed in there, but she still felt a strange sense of reverence in amongst the nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture of the main core of the Academy.<p>

"There are facilities available for daycare should any prior arrangements for care of your child fall through, miss T'Pol." The middle-aged woman declared as she continued to lead the way to the administrative building.

T'Pol nodded to the human resources functionary, a career middle management sort who had been tied into the very life-blood of Annapolis despite a civilian background. "Are they accustomed to dealing with children of extant origin?"

The woman paused, "I'm sorry?"

"Aliens…non-human children. I am certain that the ramifications of providing oversight for non-human children would present an added level of difficulty."

"To be honest, miss T'Pol, we have not yet had the privilege of a Vulcan instructor at Annapolis, but there have been quite a few at San Francisco and it is my understanding that they have developed a splendid day-care regimen for dealing with the environmental and enrichment requirements of Vulcan children."

Ah…so she was a bit of a diplomat too. T'Pol was not certain she could determine what part of having a Vulcan instructor so much counted as a privilege, nor was she entirely certain that a regimen for dealing with Vulcan children was so much necessary as it was pandering. She chose not to voice that opinion, "My concerns are primarily in the area of medical issues, I would not wish to place undue stress on the staff for concern over any possible medical or urgent care situations that might involve my child."

She paused, thinking further…what would be more comforting to a human…

"My son is not that different, in terms of behavior, from a human child."

The woman balked politely, "I had no idea, I was under the impression that Vulcan children were far more reserved than human children."

"My son is half human, and he takes after his father greatly."

T'Pol thought she saw a subtle flush of consternation from the woman, a sort of latent racism and xenophobia which, taken in context, was, perhaps, logical. She had learned during a pre-briefing from Admiral Black that Terra Prime still actively recruited at MCS campuses and their doctrine was appealing to humans at many levels. She felt no imminent threat, their activities were almost never violent. Three years ago a group of purported Terra Prime members assaulted a Coridinite tourist in Munich that caused a stir and had garnered extensive media attention. Terra Prime's leadership denounced the youths responsible, and had even taken the step of providing legal representation for the Coridinites to seek damages from the parties involved. This was a soft form of racism and one that T'Pol could, much to her own chagrin, see a logical purpose behind. Humanity over-extended itself when lending a helping hand and rarely expected anything in return; in this context humanity had a logical, if emotionally rooted, reason to feel pride and superiority. Their expectations were simple of aliens; visit, share knowledge, learn from humanity where possible, but keep your hands of human culture.

She realized her perceptions of the group were colored by her personal dealings with the organization-by-proxy. In some circles she was identified as a succubus that sought to drain the essence of humanity, to adulterate the purity of the human race with her extant genes. Solan constituted a threat to human genetic integrity, but she truly believed that this would be a matter relegated to debate and that no physical threat existed against her and her child. Even when the protests had been at the worst, the most she had endured were insults and accusations; never any attempts at physical violence. Still, she knew she had a support network in place should it become necessary. Charles junior and Elaine Tucker had given unreserved support and had demonstrated their willingness to place Solan as chief among their priorities. Much of the Tucker clan was similarly supportive, several of Trip's cousins had volunteered to watch over Solan should anything necessitate T'Pol's absence. There was also the Vulcan compound in Sausalito and the Vulcan community in Northern California on whom she could rely to provide temporary guardianship of Solan should she find herself in any way indisposed.

And indisposed she would be in a few months…she could already begin to feel the first hints of her impending Pon Farr, her body had begun the slow increase in hormone production in preparation for the "seven year itch" as Trip had once so crassly, and appropriately, put it. Still, she had a nagging concern…

She had found during the previous sortie that she could still feel Trip as kind of a dull buzz, white noise in her brain that had, when she realized what it was, found some comfort in because it meant he was still out there, still alive. A morning prior she had awoken to silence…no buzz, no white noise, no metaphysical locater beacon. She had told herself at the time it was the result of their separation, the bond had suffered over the past year between his work and the initial shake-down cruise and the all-to-short liberty he had received afterwards. Despite this, she had a nagging doubt, a subtle worry that she tried to talk herself over. If anything _had_ happened to Trip she would have felt it, almost certainly. She couldn't focus on it now, even though the silence in her mind was maddening, there were other concerns, other obligations. In two days she would be running the first sub-space theory practicum for the Electronic Warfare school at Annapolis, and between that she had to deal with her responsibilities as mother to the increasingly inquisitive and energetic Solan…and in roughly five weeks, Pon Farr would be upon her, the thought that alarmed her, perhaps, more than anything.


	47. Chapter 47

"What do you think of Quantico, mister Suvak?" The driver asked absently, casually, a disarming question that would have seemed innocent enough to most, but for an experienced SID 31 operative, it was a carefully posited test.

The "driver" assigned to him was, almost without a doubt, a field agent for the Special Intelligence Directorates section six or fourteen, the kind whose entire purpose was oversight of the other sections of SID and to "keep the house in order" to ensure that the various clerical, observational, and clandestine services did not exceed their mandate. The best solution for dealing with this kind of observation was to be frank, honest, to show-one's-hand as it were, or whatever other couched metaphor humanity was fond of using.

"I am trying not, too. If I began to appreciate the area I could be tempted to put in a transfer request."

The "driver" either slipped or was playing the role; it was hard to tell, when he replied. "Wouldn't that mean you'd have to leave Vulcan?"

"I am not averse to that possible outcome."

He had been recalled two days prior for debriefing and an assessment of his disposition of interim station chief for Vulcan. Ever since the invasion of Vulcan the entire United Earth Nations diplomatic station on Vulcan had fallen under the purview of section 31, and as such he been heaped with responsibilities far beyond his original mandate as a field agent. If he were to admit to himself, he would have to say he far preferred doing field work to attending to an office in a business suit. Performance appraisals had been positive and his cadre of field operatives had shown dedication and loyalty. Still, he preferred getting his own hands dirty and opportunities to do so had grown fewer and further between in spite of the amount of work to be done following the invasion. His station had identified some seventy eight Romulan agents and assets on the planet, detaining fifty four and "reducing" another seven. Nine had been dismissed as anything other than unwitting participants and he was fast approaching the point where he could close-the-book on the remaining eight. His clearance rate was astounding as Quantico continually reminded him. He suspected that the recall was largely formality, a bit of procedure necessary to removing the words "interim" and "acting" from his title. Still, he wasn't sure he liked the idea of being so firmly ensconced in the bureaucracy, but he still felt a strange pull towards the job and would rather take the posting he might _possibly_ despise than returning to work with the Vulcan government, which he was certain, he would despise more. Still, he had plenty of time left to get himself demoted to field duty again, or perhaps the whims of the universe would see him leave section 31.

He reflected with some disquiet that he felt it was the violence that drew him, or perhaps not so much the violence as the hunt. If there was ever a reason to get clear of his planet and his people, he could not have possibly divined a better one. As they passed the security checkpoints he noticed that the usual laconic security officers had been replaced with better equipped and, obviously, trained. Increased operational security was more than enough indicator; there was another threat out there one that could possibly put Earth in jeopardy. As the vehicle pulled up to the primary entrance of the headquarters building Suvak could see Chief Director Harris already waiting for him. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one; one's "boss" did not wait outside for you to arrive under normal circumstances and he felt a profound disquiet over the fact. As he climbed out of the vehicle Harris nodded, stifling an affable smile to maintain the proper level of Vulcan decorum. The chief director wasn't wearing a jacket and his tie looked as if it had been loosened. It struck Suvak as a rather strange level of informality, any and every other time he had been to Quantico he had been in a business suit from the time he arrived to, practically, the time he left and now was no exception. As had been those he had encountered, formality and dictums of propriety abounded here, when being addressed as either Vulcan National or SID employee every modicum of decorum had been displayed.

"Director Harris." Suvak offered, extending his hand.

"Good to have you back earth side." The older-looking human took his hand in a firm shake.

The Vulcan cocked a brow, "Is that an indication my stationing here will be permanent?"

They began walking up the steps after the greeting ritual and the associated handshake; it was only a few meters to the entrance with its utilitarian tile and glass façade. Suvak had always been struck how much the building lacked in ostentation or artistic accoutrement. Part of him just supposed that was part of the game; the clandestine services didn't need anything flashy to distract from their task. If they wanted art, they'd go to a museum, this was a place of work.

"Huh? No, we couldn't do that to you."

Suvak tried to keep his face impassive but felt the quip coming, "And there is nothing I could say that would change your mind?"

Harris stopped, "This is above board, understood?"

Suvak bowed his head in an abridged nod, "Always."

"You're wasted on Vulcan, give it two more years and we're going to put you back into the field."

Suvak's eyes lit up, it was exactly what he wanted to hear.

"Don't get me wrong…you're good for our Vulcan desk, great station chief, you run operations like you've been with SID thirty years, but I know that's not what you want to be doing."

"My desires are of little consequence, sir. My role is to serve as our interests dictate." Suvak replied.

"We…"

"Sir, I do not think we need to further ruminate on where my loyalties lie." Suvak declared with an arched brow, knowing this was just another test.

Always testing, always inquiring, always searching and exploiting; that was what clandestine service was about even if nothing about what he was doing was remotely clandestine.

"Suvak, I don't know if you're a fantastic or an awful Vulcan." Harris began, almost waiting as if expecting the section chief to protest but somehow knowing he would not. "What I do know is we're damn fortunate to have you. When Jerry recruited you, I don't know if he knew you would surpass him in every way imaginable, I kind of like to believe he did know you would."

"I am nowhere near the kind of operative he was."

"You're underestimating yourself. You're damn near the absolute best agent we have in terms of skill set and basic knowledge, and we can use that skill set elsewhere and will have to use it elsewhere in the foreseeable future."

Suvak felt the hair on his neck prickle, he could almost feel the danger in Harris' words; there would be war again, and soon. "I am ready."

Harris took the uncharacteristically familiar stance of placing a hand on the Vulcan operative's shoulder, "Soon, I promise you that…for the time being we're going to make your position at the Vulcan desk official while you train your replacement, then we're going to have you build your cadre."

Suvak wanted to grin but his brain lacked the necessary muscle memory to perform the act.

* * *

><p>"Jesus, an X-ray bloom like that…" Trip looked at the telemetry, cutting eyes back over to Archer, "You ain't seen this yet?"<p>

Archer swallowed, "We weren't looking for it."

"Billions dumped into research and development and it's always the ol' tried and true that does the heavy liftin'. We can pick out hydrogen isotopes at 'bout a million klicks, magnetic resonance, gas chromatograph, hell…you get me close enough to a planet and I can tell you what the folks pro'ly had for breakfast. We can pick up trace high-energy particles, gravitational eddies, cloaked vessels…but nothin' quite like lookin' for plain ol' x-rays to find somethin' weird goin' on."

Archer squinted at the readout, "How the hell do you read this? Wouldn't a graphical interface be better?"

Tucker shrugged, "S'pose we're just used to it, we had t'skimp somewhere in the budget, so it's just plain ol' numbers."

Archer pointed to the holo-tank, "You have that."

"Couldn' put one of those in front'a every crew station."

Archer looked at the interface, a series of boxes with short-hand designations for what they were measuring, in place of wave-form there were just numbers and labels: hi, lo, mn, md, %oer, amp, freq, cnct, and the streaming list of figures, changing constantly as the data poured in. The small window conveniently labeled XRAY was centered as the numbers by "hi" spiked then fell almost to quickly to adequately track.

"Neutron star?" Trip half inquired, half posited to the young woman at the electronic warfare station.

"Aye, sir, it conforms to all the behavior we could expect from one."

"What are we talkin' in terms of relative position?"

"Based on signal degradation, about point seven three one parsecs."

Tucker furrowed his brow. "Mister Delacroix?"

The navigator looked up from the charts at his station, his own brows evidently furrowed in-spite of being obscured by the issue ball-cap on his head. "Nothing on our charts indicate that there should be a neutron star or pulsar within that range, sir. All the star systems we've surveyed conform to the charts we have, and the only star that existed within those range parameters was a main sequence yellow dwarf."

Tucker rubbed his chin at the information, contemplating the information, it provided a clue.

"The only way a star could burn off its reaction mass that fast is if-" Archer started.

"Someone did somethin' to it deliberately…any other option would have displaced the whole dang thing and pro'ly torn this system a new-one an' a half."

Archer balked, his expression shifting and creasing his forehead, "How would you even go about doing that?"

Tucker folded his arms, bouncing his shoulders in a loose shrug, "Those sphere builders've got some crazy tech. I 'spose that'd be enough t'do the job, screw with gravitation to collapse the core in and blow off the excess reaction mass, put additional pressure on it to force it to drop in on itself, hell, they might've even figured out a way to speed relative time around it, no tellin'."

"But, why? What would that serve?" Archer groused in reply.

Trip shrugged again, "Makes one helluva beacon if you know to look for it."

Jon frowned, looking at the data, still unsatisfied with the "why" as much as the "how", "But, again, to what end? What do they need the beacon for?"

Trip uncrossed his arms, shoving his hands into the pockets of his NWU trousers, something he shouldn't have done, it didn't befit the captain of a boat, it seemed laconic and undisciplined. But something, something about this Archer kind of reminded him of all those times when he was a kid talking to the Junior Officer hot-shot he had met on Cocoa Beach, "Well, I think it's safe to say we can assume that there must be other reality layers out there. Basically, reality is like baklava, and we're both from separate layers'a filo. If we've got multiple layers actin' up and this is the stagin' area for all of it, you're gonna want somethin' that is gonna be a big enough signal but ain't gonna necessarily strike everyone as bein' that outta place."

"Baklava…" Archer cocked a brow at the augment Tucker, amused and just a little skeptical about the analogy in spite of himself.

"Maybe I'm just hungry…" He had to admit, something about baklava seemed incredibly enticing at the moment.

"My mother is the cook, skipper," Al-Sistani fired back from where he was hovering over a duty station reviewing division reports, "There is no way you're going to get me to try to make baklava."

"She does make good baklava."

Archer frowned, "Okay, enough about pastry."

"Did someone say pastry?"

Tucker and Archer both turned to see Major Musashibo approaching in woodland MCUU without his usual combat equipment.

"The universe is baklava" Al-Sistani deadpanned looking up from a report then back down again.

"And it is delicious." Tucker added.

Archer rubbed his forehead and let out a long exasperated sigh, prompting Trip to noticeably recoil at this contextual faux-pas he was fomenting.

"Now I'm hungry." Archer growled, "And to the matter at hand…what is our approach going to be?"

"Well, probably be best to determine what they're plannin' to do with the hole in the filo and a big sign advertisin' it." Tucker replied.

"And the method?"

"Blow the hell out of some stuff." Tucker answered with a kind of frankness that seemed to indicate this was a common solution where he was from.

"Really…" Archer's tone was identical to when Tucker had made the baklava analogy.

"You back 'em far enough into the corner and Xindi'll talk. The primates, arboreals, and acquatics aren't _that_ unreasonable, all things considered. Their impulse control needs work but-"

"Trip, they murdered seven _million_ men, women, and children on Earth. Not sure this could be categorized as an 'impulse control' issue."

Tucker's expression abruptly changed, the sore point of context suddenly becoming the preverbal white-elephant in the room. "Yeah…yeah they did. Sorry. I guess I just sometimes have to try to think of it as all the result of bad intel, I have to try to imagine what we'd do if we were in the same position they were in. What do ya do when the folks you've thought were god all along tell ya to do somethin' absolutely horrible? How much are ya willin' to give the benefit of the doubt when you've been told somethin' as bad is gonna be done to you?"

"The sphere builders are the enemy." Archer simplified the rhetoric.

"Yeah…" Trip's affirmation felt hollow in his throat. What would humanity have done? Everything about their history made it impossible to tell. Humans had a tendency to display mercy at the least reasonable moments and violent capriciousness when a soft-touch seemed the most rational.

"Hard sell, isn't it?" Archer commented, folding his own arms at this teachable moment. Here was this superman before him; enhanced in just about every way possible, and at this moment, he had to be the basic human barometer.

"Yeah, it really is." Tucker looked across the CIC, the personnel were dutifully performing going about their tasks but they had to be able to hear, had to know what was going on. This wasn't the place for this, not with what he was about to say. He couldn't lay his soul bare in front of his subordinates. "Join me in my office, Cap'n Archer?"

"It's your ship, Captain Tucker." Jon deferred graciously.

* * *

><p>T'Pol knew she was droning, even from the Vulcan perspective her loquacious presentation on the significance of wave-form analysis would be seen as self-serving and unnecessary. She permitted herself occasional and illogical bouts of self-doubt and looked out to the throng of advanced Electronic Warfare and Signal Division cadets, officers, and senior enlisted and half expected to see signs of boredom if not outright torpor at what was, admittedly, a rather dull subject. She had gone on and on for close to three hours about the simple tricks by which one could recognize naturally occurring versus artificially generated noise on the electro-magnetic spectrum and how best to isolate and intercept those that proved exceptionally interesting. But, instead of diverted attention, stifled yawns, and semi-dozing naval personnel and cadets she found the rapt attention of current and future MCS sailors and more than a hand-full of Marines diligently making note of each point she made and each example she illustrated.<p>

So close was their attention that for a moment she grew concerned when the tremor began working its way into her hand as she gestured to figures on the projection board. She tried to grip the arm in a way that wouldn't draw attention, fingers digging into sinew as she tried to physically will the subtle shake away. It had been getting slowly worse for days now, having started two days prior to the five day practicum. She knew what it meant, almost dreaded the thought; the fever would be coming soon… building slowly at first, tenths of a degree over the course of days, weeks even. But then, all too suddenly, the spike, the heat…the maddening heat and the need that just couldn't be sated but by one thing and one thing only, would be fully upon her. Part of her felt a strange sense of anticipation, almost a latent excitement; her mind still wrestled with the memory of the pseudo-plak tau she had gone through in Florida close to three years ago now. It was raw and unmitigated passion on every possible and conceivable level; the affection, the violence, all of it was so perfectly rendered through the bond. The unique and conflicting parts all merging together into a seamless whole and for a short time their bond was stronger than it had ever been.

But in spite of that, there was a still and quiet place in her mind that seemed to gnaw at her; it didn't so much speak as quietly and wordlessly admonish like some ancient matriarch or crone whose tongue was still but whose face and deeds seemed to lament, "you fool, you know better."

"And this concludes the lecture portion of this practicum." She stated plainly, she turned off the projection device with a simple physical mnemonic, "From here we will begin a discussion period for the remaining two hours. Are there any questions…?" she paused, then immediately pre-empted what she knew would come next, "Questions that do not involve a surreptitious attempt to ask me on a 'date'."

There were grins and a few chuckles, some very specifically directed as accompanied by tell-tale sheepish expressions. A hand went up in one of the middle rows further up in the ampitheatre, a cue on the lectern display monitor indicated this was a Lieutenant Junior Grade Carl Tombs.

"Yes, Lieutenant Tombs."

The man stood, his expression, facial features, and bearing did not lend itself to a fresh faced lieutenant JG, this man looked hardened and well on his way to his forties if a day. "You are married to Captain Charles Tucker, correct, ma'am?"

T'Pol felt a sudden twinge of worry. A week prior to the practicum starting she had been briefed by a member of Admiral Black's staff about potential concerns at Annapolis. The Naval College was a hot-bed of Terra Prime activity. They recruited heavily here, working their way into the on and off campus culture; subtly racist, subtly xenophobic, never overtly or even covertly violent, but the mantra of Earth for Humans, and the semi-isolationist "humanity first" mantra was doing its best to undermine MCS's stated mission from the inside. The potential that this potential-confrontation would turn potentially violent was small, but it could serve to undermine authority and undo what she had done to perpetuate the idea that humanity, Vulcan, and the other neighbors of the galactic community could cooperate to Earth's benefit.

"That is correct."

And here to comes…

"Any idea how many more Iowa class boats are in the works, ma'am?"

She was surprised, not enough to slip, but still surprised. This was the perfect setup for a conflict, easily playing to latent human xenophobia but instead the question had been about ship development; a seemingly much more benign, but, no less sensitive issue. She knew for a fact how many ships were being currently worked on, how many were expected to be produced in both the first and second production waves, but she, in all fairness, probably shouldn't.

"I am not privy to that information, lieutenant." She watched as he returned to his seat and the next series of hands went up, prompting the screen on the lectern to identify those inquiring.

The next four hours were spirited and lively, questions prompted more than a few ad-hoc debates, several inquiries prompted explanations she had desired to provide but had not fit with the curriculum indicated in the practicum. Individuals and groups came and went during the process as was only natural as the session wore on into its fifth and sixth hour. It was startlingly agreeable, all things considered.

* * *

><p>Forrest sat down the PADD on the desk of Admiral Black, sliding it forward. Black picked up the PADD and began to read, neither saying a word. Forrest hadn't given a reason for this meeting, hadn't even called more than a few minutes in advance; "Greg, you need to make about thirty minutes in your schedule."<p>

"When?"

"Now."

Black's expression had been stoic, but Forrest expected that the Admiral believed he was, perhaps, finally reaping the harvest of sewing fields of dissent towards the government and bureaucratic authorities. Forrest decided to let Black think what he would, perhaps there was a teachable moment in this. Black was a good man, an officer of the old mold, but this was a time that called from someone more diplomatic than he was; a Halsey or a Nelson where a Westmoreland was needed.

Black's eyes widened and he continued to peruse the PADD. "This means…"

"We won…" Forrest declared, "Enterprise, Potemkin, and Revenge are being decommissioned and will provide the frames for Saxon, Kipchak, and Pawnee."

"And…" He pointed physically at the PADD.

"The first Triumph coming out of dock will be the new Enterprise." Forrest replied a small hint of a smile crossing his face.

"Where are they cutting us?"

Forrest leaned back, lacing his fingers, "They're not Greg…we won, Vulcan wants more protection, Andoria wants a neutral damper on adventurism. We sold Rigel on the necessity and Telar is enjoying the trade security too much. When Tucker handed Krios over to the Klingons I thought he'd screwed us royally, didn't matter what Krios wanted, it was the goddam klinks."

Black said nothing, just arched a brow at Forrest, prompting him to continue.

"Everyone, all the diplomats, representatives from Rigel, Vulcan, Telar, Andoria; they were all asking 'why would he do that, why would he let them decide?' And then they'd shut up and start thinking…"

"MCS respects the will of the people, its willing to let a people self-govern, to make decisions and go in directions that are counter to MCS's interests."

"That sold them…" Forrest affirmed.

Black tried not to smile, it was exactly what he'd predicted, exactly what he wanted. The pieces were falling into place just like he'd said and hoped they would, beyond what rationality dictated. Only one piece of his puzzle was left, to complete the whole thing, to create the picture he'd seen in his mind, but he couldn't push that now it had to happen at its own pace, in its own time.

"Who are we going to tap for Triumph? I don't know why but all I can feel from that boat is task-group commander."

"A.G.'s name came up in a few circles." Forrest answered the reservation clear on his face.

"Archer." Black declared with finality.

"Jon?"

"Archer earned it, he belongs on any ship we call Enterprise."

Forrest smirked, "That's one hell of an endorsement, Greg. But are you sure we're ready to pin a star on Jonathan Archer?"

"A whole hell of a lot surer than I would be about putting one on A.G. Robinson, we need to pull his ass off the line and as soon as we can sortie Royal Oak we can disband taskgroup: DeGuello for good."

"Iowa and Missouri are currently three weeks ahead of schedule according to the latest update from Sam." Forrest commented casually.

"What about the Oak?"

"There was a design switch-up that put us behind eight days." Forrest declared with some reservation.

Black narrowed his eyes, "What kind of switch-up?"

"We went digging through some old designs submitted by Tucker and his division two IC back in fifty one, I think you'll like it. Open the document called revisions two fourteen fifty five."

Black did as he was bade, opening the document and quickly scrolling through it, "Two hundred twenty fives?"

Forrest grinned, "We'll be pulling all the one fifties and half the one oh fives, but those two twenty five millimeter railguns are…" he whistled, "They have a prototype up at Utopia Planetia, it's something to see."

Black lowered the PADD, and the set of his face became stony. "We've got another issue that just came to my attention."

Forrest furrowed his brows, "What is it?"

"Breakwater was tracking all our IFF transponders, the day before yesterday Tirpitz was detected approaching the anomalous readings picked up by Enterprise two weeks ago. At oh nine seventeen zulu the IFF signal took on a distorted quality then disappeared."

Forrest almost came out of his chair, "We lost her? What happened? My God, have we sortied ships to search for survivors?"

"Max, she disappeared…not destroyed, not attacked, not a navigational hazard, she literally ceased to exist in our plain of existence, I have no idea why or how, but it had something to do with the anomaly." Black continued to have a staid quality that seemed completely out of sync with what he was saying, "I think…and this might be a stretch into some theoretical bullshit but I think whatever that thing is, it's a door and Tucker took her through."

Forrest did come out of the chair now, "What are we going to do about it?"

Black looked at his opposite number with bizarre composure, utterly out of character for him. He had internalized all of it, the ramifications of it all, what it meant for MCS, for Earth, for the admiralty board, for their allies. "All we can do is trust that Tucker can figure out what to do, trust that Sistani and Snellis and the officers and sailors we put on Tirpitz are the best of the best and will do everything right and come home, Max. It's going to be more than our heads if everything goes tango uniform on this, our heads are the least of our concerns. Right now, all we can do is keep it quiet and hope."

Forrest took deep, angry breaths, he wanted to explode. The feeling of dread in his stomach; a ball of cold and heat in his stomach swirling around bringing him back to a thousand horrible moments at once. Beyond what it meant for his career, for the political or strategic environment; there were over five hundred souls on that boat, five hundred sets of families; mothers, fathers, brother, sisters, wives, husbands, children, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, dogs and cats, mortgages and payment plans, houses and vehicles and kitchen counter-tops and sinks and just about fucking everything imaginable. And if they had just sent them all to nothingness…he wouldn't want God to help him, he'd be perfectly fine with God damning him. "We have to be able to do something…"

"How?"

"Get a ship out there! Try to communicate or something!"

"How will causing a panic about a missing warship help anyone?"

Forrest slammed both hands palm open on the desk, leaning in towards black, his face reddened with indignation, "It might fucking help them!"

"Max, why do you think we picked Tucker for Tirpitz? Why do you think we sent of Nassir Al-Sistani and Andy Snellis? Why did magtif detail Musashibo Benkei? These are all men who are thinkers; they can think on their feet, solve problems, come up with solutions…"

"So can anyone from the think tanks!"

"They're also doers, Max…" Black replied softly.

Forrest sunk back into the chair, the first wave of dread bringing prickles of sweat to his forehead as his guts writhed from the wave of stress adrenaline dump. "What are we going to do about Tucker's wife?"

Black furrowed his brow, "T'Pol was a good sailor, she'll know when to keep it bottled up, she's not going to make a stink."

Forrest shook her head, "We've got an order to give her a berth on the Clifton Sprague, detailed to meet up with Tirpitz in two week's time."

Black sat quietly for a moment, his face contemplative as he thought about a course of action, "What's the Sprague's status?"

Forrest ran his hand over his forehead and back through his hair, "She put in for replenishment, set to sortie in five days."

"Who cut her orders?"

"Coeville." Forrest answered.

"Robert owes me a favor, get a pair of one twenty fives sent over, I'll get the orders cut to put them in, that should add another four days at least."

"Greg…"

Black looked up, fixing his eyes on Forrest's face for the first time since he had arrived, "We'e gotta have faith, Max, we have to believe they're going to pull it off."

* * *

><p>Duras idly rolled the medallion between his fingers; it felt warm and somehow reassuring despite the hard edges and heavy runic characters carved into it. The token of promise Khersa had given him at the time he had placed his family's sash across her on Ganalda a week ago. He felt no reservation about the fact she would be staying with her family for the time being. Lo'wahl's enemies knew that the stronghold of Ganalda was all but impenetrable to them, too many where his loyal retainers to present an opportunity for assassin or kidnapper strike at them. The house of Toral was too connected to present such an opportunity either; but in the interstice of travelling between house and house there was vulnerability and as much as he had reserved his feelings in the past he had been much taken with Khersa ever since she budded into womanhood. If the lineage of her mother and father were any indicator; she would produce many fine children, but more-over, Duras would seek to provide her with the level of comfort that her position of a daughter of Lo'wahl had permitted her.<p>

Love was not repellent to Klingons, much less warriors, but it was never spoken of, thus he had been forced to keep his pleasure in check. Part of him wished the opportunity had been present for them to marry on Ganalda that he could take his new bride on the long trip to the qarDaSgnan. The fact that this crew was not known to him, perhaps, made the fact that Khersa was not present, a blessing. These were all warriors from Lo'wahl's retinue as there had not been time necessary to trade out crews. The youngest of the five sons of Lo'wahl had been assigned to act as first officer and adjutant for the duration of the voyage to help facilitate the transfer of command and to act as buffer between captain and crew and crew and captain if it became necessary.

Duras had been initially surprise by the level of deference the crew had shown him immediately; it would not have been strange for them to challenge his decisions, to force him to prove his legitimacy to captain the ship. As it was, they seemed to view his relationship and his family's relationship with their house as all the validation of right to lead necessary.

Still, Krapt was an enigma to him.

Of the sons of Lo'wahl there were definitive roles and archetypes present. Khurd was, of course, the consummate warrior, the Klingon ideal given form. Dhe'bekt; the strategist, a rare enough thing among Klingons and what gave him a sizable edge over most warriors. Goral was a brawler whose reputation as both parts immovable object and unstoppable force had spread throughout the empire. L'awl; the duelist whose finesse and skill with blade or disruptor had earned him a reputation among the warrior set that constantly strived to perfect their craft.

Krapt was the unknown element. He had established no reputation for himself beyond that of eccentric bat'leth expert. He remembered him as a skinny youth, reserved and almost un-warrior-like in mannerism and behavior. The reservation was still there, but the confidence of bearing that he only know recognized from his youth was there and far more accentuated by his newly impressive physique. And, of course, the eccentricity was still there. He had taken to arranging his long hair into a bundled knot at the top and back of his head and still shaved his face smooth daily. It seemed that his inhibitions also ended where females were concerned. He did not flirt, did not solicit, at least not in an identifiable fashion, but he did go to their beds and frequently; sex for sex's sake, nothing more than two beings seeking pleasure from one another. It was distasteful and bordered on detrimental to discipline but Krapt never allowed his dalliances to affect his duty or the execution there-of. By Duras' estimates he had fornicated with at least seventy five percent of the female crew, some of them more than once and in some cases with women old enough, biologically, to be his mother.

For Duras it was a strange and alarming tendency. He, himself, had eschewed the opportunity to lay with a female even though, among their people, it was not considered inappropriate for both individuals entering into a marriage to have learned the ways of the bedroom elsewhere. Some old code had taken with Duras and he had vowed to himself that he would never lie with a female to whom he was not mated so that he would never want other than that which he had. Khurd had once confided in him that he had been much the same way, save for the fact that he and his wife had known each other's flesh many times before they were wed. Admittedly, he hungered for Khersa's body, to see her naked, to know its nuances and secrets, but he had remained chaste despite the almost prodding nature of the Lo'wahl Clan's efforts to leave them alone and ensconced in privacy. He almost smiled to himself as he remembered he narrow, delicate hands that belied her strong grip as they held hands during the declaration of betrothal. She was tall, and thin but ample in the places a woman should be. She had the nutty brown complexion of her mother and a full mane of hair shot through with tinges of clay-red and gold, eyes that were clear and sharp, full lips that hid the straight even teeth of the ancient plains folk of their home world.

Krapt knew what he was thinking as he crossed to the command seat and placed a mug of warnog before him, "I have always been very close with my sister."

Duras grunted affirmation, not sure what to say, not sure if this was a subtle challenge. There was almost a twinkle in his young subordinate's eyes. He, the youngest of Lo'wahl's children had perhaps been doted on by this older sister.

"Her fondness for you extends back to when you first came to our house." Krapt's voice almost didn't seem to befit a Klingon. His elocution was flawless and without a hint of gruffness despite its depth and complexity. His was a singer's voice, smooth and honey-like without being any less masculine.

"That was so long ago." Duras declared, wrinkling his brow.

"You were taller than Khurd back then, that was the first thing she noticed about you, how tall you were." Krapt answered.

"That changed." Duras grunted with mild amusement. He had to admit he was a fine specimen of his race, but he was a pale shadow of the massive and imposing Khurd now.

"She found many other things she liked about you." The youngest of Lo'wahl's children declared, "I fully expect you to give me many nieces and nephews."

Duras let out a harsh sounding laugh, "This is something that will have to be resolved between me and Khersa."

Krapt smirked, "I am certain you are not averse to the idea."

Duras took up the mug of warnog sipping from it, "No, not in the slightest."

"You always respected my father."

Duras turned to look at his subordinate, "Would not anyone?"

"There is real respect and fake respect. Fake respect is a mask, a lie and those who recognize it can see through it." Krapt declared quizzically as he looked out over the bridge of the D5 cruiser. "It is why you have favor in our house, we can all see through fake respect."

Duras nodded, picking up a display device with the schedule of drills and activities he had slated to keep the crew occupied and fend off the effects of boredom that was venom to the blood of crews on a long cruise. "If there were more Klingons like your father our people as a whole would benefit."

Krapt allowed himself a moment of further observation above his station, "Wisdom is one of your traits my sister found attractive about you."

Duras pulled at his beard, hiding his satisfaction, "Ensure that all crew continue to receive their extra ration of warnog and that servings are ample. We will continue to drill hard so they are to be well fed and well rested."

"It is as you say, captain."

"In the meantime, I would like a report on what to expect from the qarDaSgnan, I will be the weak link in this exchange as I have no background with them and will be representing Imperial interests with them."

Krapt smirked again, "Those additional berths were needed for supplies."

"Squealing Targs the lot of them! I could have hardly abided their stench on one of my own ships, much less sully the gift your father gave me with their presence."

Krapt let the smirk spread, clearly pleased or, at least, amused by Duras' characterization of the would-be-delegates from the other houses that had sought passage as part of the flotilla making the crossing. Duras had never considered himself a diplomat, but he had negotiated fairly with the Kriosians despite the bitter framework that had been put in place ahead of him. He wasn't an ideal; he was not the warrior Khurd was, the strategist Dhe'bekt was, the fighter Goral was, or the mastermind both his father and Lo'wahl were…but he was frank and honest in the way that should be the model for all Klingons and in that regard, at least, he was paragon.

"I can say, they seem to view us as rustics…something uncouth and simple, but it would seem to me they appreciate that quality in us." Krapt offered as precursor.

"Do they think us foolish or simpletons?"

Krapt shook his head, "No, we are just what they are not but not in any way that matters. They hunger of strength and security and will seek both in those that want the same and are amenable to cooperation."

Duras marveled at Krapt's eloquence and mastery of rhetoric and presentation, "I do not understand how you could strike them as rustic."

"Perhaps an affectation that is deliberate. We did not seek them out for alliance, merely trade and as groundwork for further relationships."

Duras nodded his head in affirmation, "Clever, do not reveal all your secrets in the first encounter, leave them without a complete picture."

"It was your father's foresight in that regard." The younger warrior deferred.

"It truly is fortunate our houses have become so intertwined." He handed the device off to Krapt who accepted it with a nod.

"Qapla!"

"Qapla." Duras replied as he once again lifted his mug.

* * *

><p><strong>[! Author's Note !]<strong>

Belated Happy Birthday, Jonathan (once again...not Archer)


	48. Chapter 48

From the bridge of _Enterprise_ Jonathan Archer watched with a muted sense of awe and terror over what he had witnessed. When the other universe's Tucker said they were going to look for something to blow the hell out of, he hadn't imagined that they would deliberately go looking for large concentrations of Xindi warships to attack, warships they had found in a concentration to Tucker's liking over Azati Prime. The aquatic and primate ships had fled when the first wave of attacking reptilian and insectoid craft had been crippled or destroyed. But Tucker hadn't been satisfied with just knocking out the first wave of three ships, he had opened up to full impulse and charged the remaining seven, laying into them with the strangely anachronistic rail-guns while still well beyond visual range. At close range the massive arrays of phase canons cut apart those ships not hulled through by the magneto-ballistic weapons.

It had almost seemed like a massacre; letting an enraged war elephant loose in a sheep pen. Despite their best attempts the Xindi had been unable to penetrate the formidable shields of the _Tirpitz_, leaving Archer to draw a dreadful comparison between the ill-fated battle between the _Hood _and _Prince of Wales_ against the sister ship of the craft for which this starship was named; Tucker had called it Harassment and Interdiction in Force. But guerrillas were supposed to hit and fade, cause havoc then scurry of to their holes, not stand the field and beat back anyone coming their way. They had been tapped into their communications the whole time and heard the dully mechanical way they had run the battle. Captain Tucker himself directly responsible for the oversight of electronic warfare, maneuvering, and missile command while his first officer, the Iraqi Nassir Al-Sistani relayed orders to gun division and the 3IC Andrew Snellis oversaw radiological weaponry which covered the batteries of phaser cannons.

The commands were in a clipped expedience of communication form that sounded completely alien to Archer and starkly contrasted the difference between his universe and theirs.

After the remaining Xindi ships had folded Tucker commed over and said, "Alright, hopefully they're runnin' to get reinforcements."

Archer had been uncertain how there was anything remotely hopeful about that and communicated as such. Even with a philosophy of threat deterrence in the form of massively asymmetric military response, a ship like _Tirpitz_ had to hope the shots wouldn't be fired.

"Well, Cap'n, losin' aroun' a dozen ships in an hour's gotta make folks pliable to talkin'."

And a little more than an hour later, more Xindi ships had jumped out, two of the huge Aquatic ships with eight supporting reptilian frigates, 3 insectoid ships, and four primate craft. Archer had felt a sudden stab of dread when three of the enemy ships had immediately broken off and begun heading for _Enterprise_ while _Tirpitz _completed a high-speed orbit of the watery world below. The combination of momentum provided by full impulse speed and the sling-shot effect of the close orbit had shot the huge warship into an intercepting path with the two reptilian and primate ships. A trio of torpedoes spat from the _Tirpitz_, the weapons flying to within a kilometer of the Xindi craft then detonating. On _Enterprise_, T'Pol detected a sudden radiological and electro-magnetic spike as the warheads burned out systems on the three hapless enemy ships. This, along with the floating hulks of the ships from earlier, seemed to give the remaining Xindi forces pause as they held their position and the colossal battle-ship swung around deftly to begin is charge of their position.

For once it had seemed to be the aquatics that lost their heads first and opened fire at the maximum limit of visual range. The shots went wide, _Tirpitz's_ did not. Tied into the battleship's external telescopics Archer and the bridge crew watched as war began to pour out of hull breaches in the lead aquatic ship, giving the visual appearance of the craft bleeding. The aquatic ship tried to come about, slowly lumbering under maneuvering thrusters to clear the fire lane only to catch another salvo in the broad-side. The ship visibly lurched and a moment later the entire opposite side of the ship seemed to split and explode outward in a single horrible moment as the contents of the ship seemed to dump out through the force of near-vacuum conditions and fluidic dynamics.

Something about it, though, had awoken a blood lust in Archer as he ordered ahead full, weapons to the ready, and shields up. Their weapons would have little affect against this many Xindi targets, but it could serve to help coral the enemy craft for _Tirpitz_ to savagely dispose of. For another six brutal minutes the duel continued as _Enterprise_ wove _Tirpitz's_ wake trying to keep Xindi ships in play for its bigger companion.

The tone had changed with a suddenness Archer had not expected as he heard over the comm a crewman on _Tirpitz's_ bridge declare, "Sir, we are detecting entangled electons."

Tucker's reply had been succinct, "Show me."

There was a moment of silence as Al-Sistani and Snellis continued to relay instructions to gunnery divisions, then Tucker shouted new instructions, "All railgun batteries, check fire, demil rounds out, radiological, shift all fire to powerplants, missile control, load starfish."

Somehow Tucker's 2 and 3 IC had immediately picked up on the mandate and began relaying a new set of commands to conform to some unspoken rules of engagement.

That had been twenty minutes ago, now the crippled Xindi ships with the exception of the remaining aquatic ship were being boarded and pacified by the compliment of Marines on _Tirpitz _and Archer was quietly waiting an explanation for Tucker's sudden change of heart.

The communications snatched him from his revrie, "Cap'n Archer, sir, I'd like to request the presence of both yourself and your science officer on the _Tirpitz_."

* * *

><p>Erika looked up from where her head was resting on Archer's lap as he once again looked at the small eggshell colored invitation with gold lettering bearing her name.<p>

"Come on Jon, not this again."

He snorted, "I told you I wasn't angry."

"But where's yours, right?"

Archer shrugged reclining against the wall at the head of his bunk, the movie playing on the vid viewer going on completely unheeded by the pair. He shrugged slightly, "Not everyone gets one every time."

"But you're _the_ Jonathan Archer."

"As you're so fond of reminding me," he chuckled wryly.

Their stratagem had been perfect, the feigned conflict in front of the crew; it was nothing new, they had butted heads before and this long history of doing so allowed them do manage a convincing facsimile of the behavior. Thus nobody suspected anything short of them hashing it out in a private setting during these increasingly frequent rendezvous.

"You've got to admit, it makes for a good show."

Archer looked down to where her head was pillowed against his thigh, "We might need to step it back a notch because it's starting to look a bit like a lovers' tiff."

"Well, if I'm getting my captaincy it might not matter anymore."

Archer frowned, "Yeah because we'll only get to see each other once or twice a year."

Erika considered those words, not really wanting to think about it herself, "Trip and T'Pol make a go of it."

Archer replied almost under his breath as his attention once again fixated on the invitation to the Naval Ball and Gala, "I'm not sure we're as disciplined as those two, honestly."

She sat up, leaning back against the wall next to him, "Oh cheer up, if you don't get an invitation we'll put a wig on you and a fake mustache and I'll take you as my date."

Archer half smirked, then his expression changed to something more serious and reflective, "Look, I just want to make it clear, I believe with every fiber of my being that you deserve this."

She snorted, "Yeah, and?"

"Hear me out, I really do believe you earned this, as a matter of fact its over-due. You're a smart competent officer, hell, probably better than half the Oh sixes we have floating around right now, if that hadn't been the case they never would have stuck you on Columbia during Vulcan, and they sure as hell wouldn't have had you calling the shots for twelve destroyers and four frigates to take off chasing them back to their space."

Erika basked in the glowing assessment; Jon never said things like this, not that he didn't think it, but vocalization was important to a woman and he seemed utterly incapable of grasping that. Of course, it had to be largely on his recommendation on her performance appraisals that she be considered for command; another thing he never said but a perfect example of actions speaking louder than words.

A beep from the desktop console in his quarters snatched both of their attention.

Jon glanced at it then looked away, trying to prove a point if one that didn't need to be made. He wasn't going to jump up and get it, that's what he would normally do. To have done so after sex would have been a special kind of taboo, but as they were now, just hanging out in the quarters, spending some alone time, the ban was not as imminently enforceable.

"You going to get it?"

He shrugged, "Why?"

"Might be important."

"I am off duty."

She smirked, "You're not selling it to me, Jon."

He turned his head to look over at her, "Not even a little?"

"Nope, not one bit." She smirked back and pressed a finger to the tip of his nose.

He chuckled, "Damn."

He rose, taking a second to straighten the old sweatpants he had been wearing on and off since his first year of active duty, they were broken in and had been comfortable, but of late they had started doing the weirdest thing in regards to binding and creasing in all the wrong ways. It was a subtle reminder of age, how old did they have to be now? How old did that make him? The years just kept creeping up, and while he wasn't feeling them yet, if the sweats were any indicator, he would soon.

He opened the inbox and saw a priority message from Forrest waiting for him just in. It couldn't have been that big of an emergency or he would have gone for the direction connection, which mercifully hadn't happened as it would have required Erika to quickly scramble onto the floor or into the privy to hide her presence. The message was short, only a single line.

_Jon, you're getting your star, the keel for the new Enterprise is being laid, congratulations._

He stared, not even aware of his jaw dropping as a sudden flush of warmth came over him. He re-read it, needing to justify the sudden sense of dreadful elation. This couldn't be true, could it? A third and fourth time, he heard the shift of sheets as Erika stood and walked over.

"What is it?"

"I'm-" He couldn't finish the sentence, rereading it a fifth time.

She stopped, leaning down with a quick peck on his cheek to read.

"Oh…my God!" She exclaimed breathlessly.

"This-"

"_Oh_ my _God_!" Higher pitched this time and with more animation.

"I'm going to be-"

"OH MY GOD!" She screamed.

The manic grin finally overtook the shock, forcing his face to comply with the correct reaction to the news. He almost felt tears filling his eyes, he had waited and strived and worked for this for so long now. Some had said he deserved it ever since they returned from Xindi space.

He didn't know what to do, didn't know how to react. The flood of pride and excitement and joy overtaking him to such an extent he couldn't even muster a clue as how to react taking into account his reputation and the understated legend that had grown up around him. He snatched Hernandez's hand, pulling her into his lap and kissed her hard on the lips.

"OH MY GOD!" She squealed again as soon as their lips parted.

All the sensations set his brain reeling, as every possible iteration of neuro-chemical and hormone combination surged into his bloodstream in reaction to the news. After a few moments of taking it all in and his brain scrambling to make sense of it all he became keenly aware of the erection trying to dig into the back of her left thigh. She must have already been aware of it from the way her breath was now coming heavily and the perking at the front of her t-shirt where nipples were attempting to bore their way through the fabric.

He placed a hand purposefully on her thigh, fingers curled inwards past the meridian of propriety to tread into intimate territory. Nothing about her demeanor changed as he looked into dilated pupils, trying to gage the response to the course of action he was intent on undertaking. She didn't flinch, didn't hint at recoiling, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders as he moved his hand up to the waist of her own athletic pants and slid his fingers inside.

"Victory celebration?" he lilted.

"Hurry the fuck up and get to it." She replied in a breathless voice.

* * *

><p>Valek had noted with some chagrin the dour nature of the entire voyage back to Romulus after they were discharged to Romulan custody at the border of their space. The human warship <em>Potemkin<em> and her escorts had conducted them to the border where a group of military freighters had picked them up, shields lowered and weapons powered down in a further emasculation before the humans. Valek understood the reasoning behind it now, understood the might of the humans and viewed the gesture as suitable. Surat had been aloof as well during the voyage, still making the effort of providing chain of command with his men, still behaving as the commander, but there seemed to be an entirely different set of concerns to him even as the excitement and elation in his cohort grew at finally getting to return home. All of that had built to a single terrible moment when, just before the troop transport they had boarded landed, that everyone, to a man, in the unit had suddenly begun to wonder if this really was home they were returning too. Not a concern over whether they would be transferred to penal facilities or killed outright, but whether they could ever be Romulan again.

Surat had drawn close to him as they waited at the debarkation ramp, speaking quietly, "I would like you to meet my family, Centurion."

"Of course, sub-commander." Even during their captivity they had not allowed protocol to slip, which is part of the reason why they would be able to step off the ramp with heads high and backs straight, they have never stopped being soldiers of the empire even if it was something no one else would ever be able to grasp.

Valek was almost stunned by the beauty of the woman waiting for them, he had not known that the sub-commander had a betrothed, he knew for a fact he didn't have a wife, and a lover would not have shown up to greet him, much less with proconsul Demek. Surat embraced them both, then turned to his subordinate. "Centurion, this is my sister and father."

He looked back to his family, "This is Centurion Valek, possibly the finest soldier in the empire and, likely, responsible for saving my life many times."

Valek took his eyes away from the beauty before him to focus the correct level of deference to the second most senior public official in the empire, "Proconsul Demek, sir, it is an honor."

The imperious elder raised a hand, "There is no need for formality, Centurion, if what my son says is true then I am more deeply indebted to you than you could ever grasp," the next words came choked with emotion, "for returning my son to me."

Valek looked over to Surat, letting a knowing smile come across his face, "Sir, your son is a far far finer officer than I ever would have given him credit for." He looked back, letting his eyes drift from the sister to father, "He is probably the single most heroic man I have ever served with."

There was something in her eyes that Valek found disconcerting, something almost predatory under the layer of appreciation, eyeing him like a morsel to be savored then consumed, he steeled his focus quickly as the first wave of erotic thoughts washed through his mind. Surely her appetites would be substantial as they tended to be among the upper echelons of Romulan society. There had always been rumors about the way the high-born families conducted themselves and part of him wondered if this might not be a proxy outlet for incestuous desires on her part.

"We understand it will take time for you to reacclimatize, Centurion, but we must gain an understanding of our foe and why things transpired as they did. You must be the guest of our household in the meantime."

Valek balked, shocked by the generosity and another wave of sexual desire began entertaining the idea of lust-fueled liaisons with Surat's sister. "I could not impose on you in such a way, sir."

Demek roared affably, "Nonsense! If my son views you as a brother, then you have to be viewed by me as a son. You are not married, are you?"

Valek shook his head, "No, sir, I have family elsewhere; mother and father, brother and sister-in-law, nieces and nephews."

Demek nodded, "I will be certain they receive word of your safe return and make provisions for you to contact them should you so desire."

Valek nodded appreciatively, "I would greatly appreciate that, sir."

Demek nodded, "Good, good, come with me, I will see to it immediately."

Valek felt a leap of elation at the thought of getting to contact his beloved family, "Thank you!"

As they drew away Surat leaned in close to Takal Terelisa, "Be gentle with him, he has been through much."

She flashed her brother a look of affected consternation, "I have no idea what you are talking about."

Surat frowned, "I know you want him, I can smell how much you want him," he grabbed her robed arm, "I'm surprised father couldn't."

She gave him a toying look, this was an old interaction between the two of them, "Jealous?"

"I don't have those sort of appetites," he growled low.

"I mean of him." She rasped low.

"I don't have _those_ sort of appetites either."

"Then why does it concern you whom I allow between my legs and when?" She laughed softly.

"Because he is a good man, and you have a tendency to chew up and destroy good men."

Her pretense folded unceremoniously as her eyes softened, "I want to thank him, for bringing you back to us."

"Takal, what will he do once the thanking is done?" He let the venom drain form his voice in return.

She watched the retreating form following her father, he was shorter than her twin, about that same height as herself, but he carried himself discipline and a kind of toughness she found alluring and somewhat alien from what she was accustomed too. "Your assessment of him, is it genuine?"

Surat nodded, "It is."

"Then maybe he is worth keeping, father desires grandchildren and you have seem disinclined to make such a provision."

* * *

><p>Nassir stood with his arms crossed watching the versions of Archer and T'Pol from this reality quietly as Trip began to explain what had changed. Their demeanors were confused and, at least on the part of the Vulcan, profoundly disquieted, he was not entirely sure if it was in response to what they had done or if it was something else specifically directed at the Charles Tucker he knew.<p>

"We've seen entanglement before, used in IFF and trackin', hell we use it for real-time communication, but nothin' like this." Trip began pulling up a list of inscrutable numbers on the holo-display. "Typically yer gonna be lookin' at somethin' to the tune of a couple'a electrons, synced neutron rotation, protons that're vibratin' at the same frequency."

He reached for the edge of the holo tank and lift to pieces of metal, identical in shape and color with the same marking, "These came from two of the ships we engaged; they're absolutely identical."

Archer cut eyes over to his science officer then back again, "They're the same part, shouldn't they be the same?"

Tucker shook his head, "There atomically identical."

T'Pol finally spoke up, "They would use the same alloys, the likelihood that they would be virtually indistinguishable from one another is very high."

Tucker shook his head again, "Not like that, we're talkin' on the level of atomic structure, atomic vibration, electron and neutron frequency, even the faults in the metal itself, the artifacts in the alloy, everything about this plate is one hun'erd percent identical. These plates are, in effect, entangled."

Archer furrowed his brow, "I don't think I'm following you, Trip."

"In their natural state, entire atoms can't be entangled to one another, they have to be manipulated to approach near entanglement, the only natural form a'entanglement is gonna occur when you've taken sub-atomic components of a single atom and separated 'em from one another. It's like a serial number, all the related components of an individual atom are gonna behave the same. The sulfur isotope artifacts in this plate," he lifted his right hand, "would never be behavin' in the same manner as the isotopes in this plate." He lifted the left hand in turn.

It hit Archer suddenly, "So what you're saying is-"

"These are from the exact same ship, in two different realities."

Archer stood there silent, unsure how to process what had just been revealed, unsure what portent it had.

"It doe'nt end there, our scans seem to indicate that seven'y eight percent of the two ships in question are made up'a the exact same atoms, and apparently the cook on both ships were the same fellah." Tucker paused, "One of 'em is dead, but we're talking same DNA, nine'y three percent identical atomic makeup."

T'Pol began to open her mouth but he cut her off.

"And yes, I mean the same atoms, same vibration, same electro-magnetic signature, same movements, same compound lattice structures down to the trillionth of a millimeter. The findin's are all right here for your perusal"

"So you were right, this is a staging area, they're pulling in support from other realities, but to what end?" Archer inquired, feeling a deep rumble of dread in his gut.

Tucker turned his head over to the porthole leading into the CIC, giving a nod to the Fleet Marine standing there who turned and opened the hatch. A group of Marines in full combat gear entered, with the young, tall lieutenant Pritchard and the sharp eyed latter-day samurai Major Musahibo taking up the rear. Between the Marines stood a bound and hooded figured, being shuffled along by the marines behind him. When they reached the holotank one of the Marines pulled the hood from his head.

"He can pro'ly give you a bit more insight." Tucker declared.

Pritchard stepped in closer, speaking in his gravelly voice that seemed so in contradiction to his youthful good looks, "State your name."

The Xindi primate looked around the assembled individuals, eyes wide with shock and fear, "My name is Degra."

* * *

><p>Admiral Ngyuen stood next to Admiral Robert Coeville looking out of the observation cupola at the partially completed structure of the <em>U.S.S. Royal Oak<em>. She was a magnificent ship, long and lithe looking, most of the saucer and long dagger shaped hull projections on the top and bottom sides were completed, a series of huge gashes in the hull daggers and saucer showing where the new 225mm rail guns would be installed, two of the monsterous sixteen meter long weapon assemblies already floating in place above there they would eventually be emplaced, sunken into the ships super-structure until it was time to take bearing and fire.

Coeville spoke up in French, a language both he and Ngyuen shared and made for more intimate conversations in the presence of mostly English speakers, "I have to admit, I am jealous."

The Vietnamese former-attack boat skipper laughed, "Why? I'll be spending the next few years in space, I probably won't be able to make it back to Earth during that whole time."

Coeville shrugged, "A ship like that though, she's magnificent."

Ngyuen nodded, "She is at that."

It wasn't like he would be captaining the ship, it would just be the flagship for the fleet, but still to stride the decks and stand in its CIC would be enough for Ngyuen who had spent years now on either Ernest E. Evans or CG class boats. In the years since he received his first star he had commanded task groups from the bridge of more than one frigate and it just seemed out-of-place for a flag officer.

"So Cuvey is going to be skipper of the boat?" Ngyuen finally asked after a long laconic silence.

"That's correct, he should be arriving shortly."

"I've never worked with him before and haven't seen the brief on him, what's he like?" The fleet officer inquired.

Coeville had only very rarely set foot off Earth, he was an administrator of the first order, but not a sailor by any stretch. Ngyuen on the other hand still had the sea legs of a sailor a third his age, and while he liked to put back into port, he was more than happy to stand on the bridge of a ship running the expanse of the stars.

"He has been stuck as commander of the Ernest E. Evans since before the forty seven war, kind of lost in the shuffle. He's a good commander, just never the top of anyone's list for a CG ship. Still, I think he would be a good fit for this kind of warship, he has been a task group commander enough times that he knows how to run disparate elements for a large crew structure." Coeville explained in a rather animated fashion, he was a man who got excited over the quality of personnel and often could spot talent from a long way off. It was Coeville who had been instrumental in getting Commander Nassir Al-Sistani stationed to the _Tirpitz_, where he was, apparently, taking to it like a fish to water.

The Vietnamese officer nodded, "All the recommendation I need to hear. He's not going to chafe under command though, will he?"

"Nothing in his file seems to indicate he would, he's been a component in as many task groups as he has commanded, maybe not terribly aggressive, but a smart commander who knows how to exploit mission parameters to their fullest."

Ngyuen nodded, smiling a little, "So the perfect fighting dog to let off the chain and easy to rein in afterwards."

"Precisely."

Nguyen looked at the white fluted black lettering on the saucer the stacked lines of name then designation, _U.S.S. Royal Oak, BB-03_. A real battleship, the type that were spoken of as storied legends from Earth's past, monsters of the sea, commanders and lords of everything they saw, capable of wading through their foes with deadly confidence and matching violence. It would be a grand fleet for certain, just a shame what it entailed.

"It makes me a little sick to think that in order to get out there we'll have to be giving A. G. Robinson his star." Ngyuen griped, still speaking in French to his friend from La Rochelle.

Coeville looked over at his fellow officer, "You didn't hear?"

He furrowed his brows, "Hear what?"

"The board selected and the congress approved, Jonathan Archer is to be the recipient of the promotion."

Ngyuen crowed loud, a huge smile blanketing his face, "Archer?"

"The one and only." The Frenchman answered with a nod, "You were his commanding officer back in forty one, were you not?"

Ngyuen nodded, ruminating on the past for a moment, "I was. Jon is a good officer, a good leader. Even back then he seemed destined for this."

"A fortunate series of events, no doubt."

"He won't be put behind a desk will he? He might not be the best attack ship commander, but he leads well." Ngyuen stated, folding his arms across his chest.

"No, he will be acting as junior fleet operations commander once we determine the ideal set of waters for him." Coeville replied.

"I hear that _Enterprise_ is being decommissioned, will he be taking the Iowa or Missouri or perhaps Kirishima once she is done?"

Coeville let a cryptic expression cross his face, at once a little chagrined but also curious and excited, "No, they are laying in the keel of the new Enterprise, a Triumph class cruiser."

Ngyuen turned fully to face Coeville, "Triumph class?"

"More out of the head of Captain Tucker, the Triumph and Revenge classes will be fulfilling the role that the CG originally did. They are smaller and less heavily armed than the Iowa class, but still much more in terms of range, protection, and firepower than what we got out of the CGs. They handily outclass anything in the quadrant in terms of offensive and defensive capability."

Ngyuen looked back out at the _Royal Oak_, named for and meant to ensconce the might of the old British Admiralty, but he couldn't help but feel that despite its majesty and might, it was still somewhat untested. "It is a shame we never got to put the _Tirpitz_ through her paces, everything I have read seems to indicate she was never once in any true danger, never had to show her full offensive might."

"Is that a bad thing? If she knows no equal, that can only mean she is the mightiest ship in the water."

The fleet admiral furrowed his brow, "It is still good to know that degree to which you can expect her to perform, to know her breaking point."

"If between the Romulans and Krios she has not yet met that point, we can assume that it might be too high to ever have to face the eventuality, no?"

Ngyuen chuckled ruefully and nodded, "That is true. If we hit that point it will be in the most dire circumstance and it will be do or die regardless."

Coeville pat his friend on the back, "May it never reach that point."

* * *

><p><strong>[! Author's Note !]<strong>

**A teaser chapter for Book III should be up soon, but it will be just that; a teaser, don't expect any headway on that story until we're starting to wrap up Book I and Book II is a bit deeper into the story. Book III is going to take a different approach; if "Trip" Tucker had actually been cast as a female character played by Jolene Blalock and Connor Trinneer had been cast as the Vulcan outsider with Erika Hernandez commanding in place of Jonathan Archer, effectively following the same story arch as the 4 canonical seasons of Enterprise but with my own unique twist on the Temporal Cold War and the multiple universes.**


	49. Chapter 49

T'Pol made her way to the front door, the almost subtly burning sensation of heat on the back of her neck just wouldn't seem to go away; so persistent that should couldn't even ignore it anymore. Meditation had proved fruitless in dealing with it so she had attempted a protracted bout of sun bathing to beguile her nerves by duplicating the sensation across the rest of her body, all that had managed to do was give her entire body a greenish cast as she got a mile case of sun burn. Solan had seemed to sense the issue and began behaving in a fashion that was uncharacteristically stolid, his normal good natured mischief, inquisitiveness and boisterousness dropping off entirely until he almost seemed like a miniature Kolinahru. She found that it bothered her to see his behavior so drastically shift, it was almost like he wasn't Solan anymore, but just another Vulcan child. She realized that she wanted that half of Trip in her son, that human nature that seemed to, somehow, so perfectly compliment his Vulcan half.

The chime at the door had caused her an illogical level of irritation, but why shouldn't it? Who was bothering them? Why was there someone at the door? She didn't have any pending packages or deliveries, she hadn't invited anyone, if this was another uninvited well-wisher from Trip's family or a surprise visit from Black's cronies, or a drop-by from a former crew mate so help her-

She opened the door to see who had pressed the chime and stopped dead, staring disbelievingly forward. "Mother…"

T'Les furrowed her brow, "Are you unwell? Your skin tone is peculiar."

T'Pol lifted her hand, some unconscious cue forcing her to look at her skin to validate what she already knew, "I have been sun bathing, mother, I simply spent more time in full sun exposure than was logical."

"Sun bathing?"

"An illogical human practice of purposefully exposing one's body to UV light from Sol, it is strangely agreeable."

T'Les didn't react, just stood their holding her bags; a subtle expression of consternation beginning to color the region around her eyes as she looked back at her only child. T'Pol blinked, unsure where to go from this impasse.

"Are you going to invite me in?"

T'Pol seemed suddenly startled by her own lack of couth, "Allow me to take your bags, mother."

The matron obliged, handing off one of the bags then stepped inside, "I suppose you are curious about my unheralded arrival."

"It is a…surprise, mother." T'Pol answered, finding the human words for the emotional reaction the most apt at the moment.

T'Les let her varnish of Vulcan propriety drop, speaking as a mother to a daughter, "I know the fever will be on you soon T'Pol, concessions have been made for you to go be with Charles, have they not?"

T'Pol nodded, "Yes, I will be departing in four days' time on a destroyer to rendezvous with the _Tirpitz_."

"And Solan?"

"Charles' parents had already made plans to provide supervision and support during that time."

T'Les' mood seemed to lighten, something that was barely perceptible to anyone, "It would be agreeable to meet again with Charles the elder and Elaine."

"But, mother…what of your position at the academy?" T'Pol inquired, suddenly alarmed by the thought.

"I have been permitted a leave of absence." T'Les replied in a casual tone.

"You took one when Solan was born."

"I am taking another now, they extended the privilege without reservation." The elder answered as she surveyed the sitting room just off the foyer.

"Why would they do that?"

"There is some curiosity as to how the fever will be resolved with a human mate, you are to be, in effect, the test subject, in the interest of this I have come to facilitate the process by providing you with supervision for your offspring."

T'Pol furrowed her brow, feeling almost exposed and violated. So the High Command wanted to know how a Vulcan at their most animalistic would fair with a human who passions ran in that direction constantly. Did they want pictures too, video, an audio recording with annotated transcript? Would Trip be required to preface every episode with the date and time?

"I will not permit myself to be observed."

"That is unnecessary, there are some simple scans of your neurochemistry and a basic physical that will bear out the results of plak tau after the fact, they are non-invasive and not intimate by any stretch." She reassured her daughter, understanding the reservation. Her first Plak Tau with her mate had been a rather lively series of encounters over the course of five days that she still remembered with startling clarity.

"What of Charles and Elaine Tucker?"

T'Les sat down the bags and turned on her heel to face her daughter, "Of course they must come stay here during the duration, I find their company agreeable and Charles senior makes for an interesting debate opponent. I can say that I have found the interactions with them were sorely missed upon my return to Vulcan."

T'Pol cocked a brow, "You are getting along too famously with your in-laws, mother."

T'Les furrowed her brow again, "I do not understand."

"It is a human expression, mother. Besides, it was my understanding that Charles and Elaine would be taking Solan home to stay with them for the duration."

"Would they be amenable to changing those plans?"

T'Pol crossed her arms, the act causing the inflamed skin of her chest just over her breasts to send a spark of protest to her brain, "I do not see where the harm lies in asking. However, I feel inclined to inquire about your insistence in this regard."

T'Les arched a brow at her daughter, "I lack the proper certification to operate ground conveyance on Earth."

Something in T'Pol wanted to laugh at that. It was just like mother, taking the roundabout way to get to the sticking point.

It was at that moment that the sehlat that Trip had begun calling "teeth", though she felt the appellation of insufficient, came striding into the room with Solan perched on his back. The creature had grown even larger and carried around his growing charge without the first semblance of effort. T'Pol watched in amusement as her mother's eyes went wide and she almost physically jumped at the sight. The creature crossed immediately to the elder Vulcan sniffing her a few times before licking the back of her lowered hand then settled down at her feet disgorging his groggy charge in front of his foremother.

T'Les turned to look at T'Pol, arching an inquisitive brow, she replied at the prompting, "Solan likes to take a nap on top of him, he finds comfort in the closeness, they have been close ever since we were able to bring Solan home."

T'Les nodded at this, "As it should be, a sehlat is an excellent companion and protector for one his age."

As if prompted "teeth" lifted his head and swung it around to begin licking at the little mop of sandy blonde hair on the tiny Vulcan head, then nudging him with his muzzle to help wake him up. A few huffing yowls and nudges latter he had managed to thoroughly rouse the young Vulcan-human into a state of wakefulness.

"Immup, Immup, stop it." The little being protested to his furry nanny, his tiny hands coming up to push the melon sized gad-fly that was the sehlat's head away. He stood up on sleep wobbly legs, allowing the creatures head that came up behind him to act as support to do its job of helping him keep equilibrium until his sense of balance returned. He looked up at T'Les, cocking his head to the side with a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

The elder Vulcan knelt, looking into the tiny face that seemed an endless wonder to her, "Do you know who I am?"

The last time she had seen him he had been an infant, part of her suspected he was already aware of the world around him even then, but that was the type of speculation that was the wont of parents and grandparents and did not always find its root in reality. But he looked at her now with eyes that had that same knowing twinkle she saw when he was a baby. Yes, he knew, he was aware, had always been aware.

"You are my fore-mother." He said in his still small childish voice that botched pronunciation ever so slightly but conveyed the idea in a perfect complete sentence.

She arched a brow at the child, working hard not to let some latent instinct pull the edges of her mouth upwards, "You have two fore mothers, do you not?"

"No." He answered, smiling in her stead.

"You do not?" She challenged softly.

"No, you are fore mother, the other is grammy!" He offered with satisfaction that he had bested her rhetoric puzzle.

T'Les looked back to T'Pol whose expression was almost smug with pride, her own expression showing her satisfaction with her daughter's offspring, "That is, indeed, correct, you are very perceptive Solan. I will be staying with you along with your grammy and…?"

"Grampy is the appellation by which he knows Charles junior." T'Pol supplied.

"Yes, I will be here along with your grammy and grampy, but your mother must go away for a short time." T'Les declared, explaining the change of routine the child would be experiencing.

"Because of the itch." Solan declared, his expression becoming stolid and very Vulcan-like abruptly.

T'Les arched a brow at this, "The itch?"

"Momma has an itch," he pointed towards his stomach, "in here. Dadda can fix it."

T'Les turned back to her daughter, confusion and a hint of alarm on her face.

"Sa ken-tor, sa fai-tor rik'fainu." T'Pol said quietly, feeling a slight shiver go up her spine about the bizarrely perceptive way her son knew she was approaching the fever, how he knew that she required her mate to resolve the issue.

T'Les extended a hand, placing it on the child's cheek for a moment before standing and approaching her daughter, "The child parent bond is rarely this strong."

T'Pol bowed her head a moment, "I am certain that I am to blame for this. Solan desires a great deal of affection and I have been loath not to provide it for him. He wants to be held, hugged, the desire increases with the lack of Trip's presence so I have done so to provide comfort since I am partially responsible for keeping him separated from his father. Otherwise he would likely turn to Trip for affection, the extent of their bond requires I act as proxy; from Trip to myself, then from me to Solan and vice versa."

"It is peculiar, T'Pol, but not necessarily wrong or undesirable. If he ever desires to be truly Vulcan, he will have a better understanding of one of the core elements of our being better than most who have grown up steeped in our culture."

T'Pol felt a stab of defensiveness, almost as if it were a recrimination against her child, "He _is_ Vulcan."

"And he is human as well, I would venture to say surrendering either element would be regrettable, but should he decide to reject the human half of himself, he will likely become a paragon in our society. I do not with that on him nor on you, and especially not should it occur in Charles' lifetime as it will rend his soul to be rejected in that way by his own offspring."

* * *

><p>"Two months ago," Tucker began his voice strangely focused, the twang gone in a way that Archer had never experienced from either their own Trip or this one, there was something jarring about, like it wasn't the same person anymore, "I ordered a massive ordnance strike against a high value enemy target. This target, while of military significant, did not constitute an immediate tactical threat but rather a long term strategic concern."<p>

He laced his fingers together, "I said concern…not threat, we had neutralized the advantage it presented to the enemy, but it did directly contribute to their readiness posture. This strike consisted of magnetically accelerated high density projectiles fired from and other-than-orbital planetary approach. Do you know what a forty kilogram projectile traveling at fifteen thousand kilometers a second does, Mister Degra?"

The Xindi swallowed, not answering.

"The effect is something akin to a one-third megaton yield of high explosive." Tucker leaned back in his chair, but didn't stop speaking, "The target was a mining complex that was situated along the eastern edge of a shallow rise plateau sitting at fifty six meters above sea level. The destructive force produced managed to sink the entirety of the complex including the mining structures within and beneath the plateau to seventeen meters below sea level by the time the final piece of ordnance made contact."

Behind him, Nassir Al-Sistani grunted at Tucker's recounting, prompting his commander to continue.

"We didn't just flatten it, we recessed it back into the earth, just dirt, and rock, and support trusses, all things that are there to absorb impact, to dissipate it, to spread it out and make it less." Tucker stopped fixing the Xindi with a glare that redefined 'if looks could kill'. "What do you think I could do to a major metropolitan center?"

"We were acting under information that you intended to wipe us out! That you were to be the aggressors, that if we didn't-" The Xindi started to retort when a thunderous fist from Tucker came slamming onto his desk with a resounding crash, an errant PADD lying their splintering at the force of the blow, sending cascades of shivered plastic, scratch resistant view-screen, and silicon control and function chips an boards sailing through the office.

"I don't give a damn what you'd been informed of!" Tucker bellowed with a fury that even startled the stolid Commander Al-Sistani.

Degra froze in fear, a small cut on his right cheek where a fragment of plastic had cut him on its outward path from the ill-fated PADD it had once been a part of.

"Who issued the orders to collapse the star? Who issued the order to use this plane of existence as a staging ground? Who told you to attack Earth in the first place? Tucker roared as he slammed his fist back into the desk, the heavy thick plastic laminates letting out an audible crack as something broke in the structure, "You're gonna tell me or so help me God I'm gonna wipe out…every…damn…Xindi drawing breath in this God forsaken little shit-hole!"

Tucker leaned in, his face inches from the cowering primate, "That'll settle it all up real nice and clean. None of you left, nothin' to be a threat. Bet here's gotta be about seven million families back on Earth that'll be just fine with that as a conclusion."

Degra finally found his voice, "You'd wipe out an entire race, five entire races, a whole culture, completely destroyed and for what?"

Tucker's expression became incredulous, "Wasn' that precisely what y'all were plannin' for humanity?"

Degra shouted back, "But we failed!"

"You don't get points for comin' up short, jackass!"

Archer realized that in any other context what he had said would have been funny, he might have even laughed in this context if it wasn't for the fact part of him was worried about to what degree this Tucker had it focused in a single direction. He was, after all, an augment, as the episode with the PADD and desk had so clearly illustrated. He was strong as an ox…stronger, and is seemed to be that he had a temper. It wasn't worth taking a chance on his good humor when it very clearly seemed to be at its limit. The real question was, how much of it was bluster; how much was bravado? Was this just a bad-cop routine to end all bad-cop routines or was he seriously considering following through?

"Mister Al-Sistani." Tucker barked.

"Sir."

"Get gunnery to plot targeting solutions for the reactor blooms we detect on Azati Primer, replace the standard demilitarization charges with class five demolition devices."

Al-Sistani offered a raised eyebrow, "The M six oh sevens, sir?"

"Correct."

The commander nodded, "Roger that, sir, I'll get radiological down to operations to begin the change-out."

Archer suddenly grasped, at least partially, what had just been ordered, "Radiological…"

"Best way to cook off anti-mater reaction mass is by startin' the reaction with an anti-mater base charge, no more'n two kiloton worth; should be enough in their power plants planet side to push about seven megatons a location."

"You can't!" Degra wailed, "My-"

The Xindi stopped, as Tucker once again fixed him with the glare, "Then tell me who's in charge!"

Degra clammed up, his mouth a thin line as the color drained from face and lips.

Tucker turned back to his 2IC, "Proceed with the order, commander."

"Aye, aye, sir"

Archer was about to voice his own protest when Tucker fixed his eyes on him, the expression cold and harsh, but there was a twinkle in the eyes that Archer knew, even from this alien Trip, he knew that look. The mischief there, the subtle beams of intent that said 'this isn't me, the Trip you see isn't the real Trip, it's all a disguise', the wink that followed confirmed it.

* * *

><p>"Sit down."<p>

The Vulcan did as she was bade, Sivik was having a hard time keeping the Romulan blood in check today, he seemed agitated, "I imagine you know why I called you here."

"It would be logical to assume it would have something to do with me being the case officer for theta zero three eleven." T'Var replied with characteristic Vulcan reserve

"Events are converging in a fashion that had not been anticipated, the continuity arc has been altered by an outside influence." He began in an exasperated fashion as he paced his office.

T'Var furrowed her brow, suddenly finding herself wondering if she had managed to slip through the stream of time. It was already understood that things were occurring in a peculiar fashion in their area of responsibility. Had she fallen out of continuity and had moved back to the events just prior to Krios.

"Respectfully, sir, we have already had this conversation."

Sivik turned, "No, this is another issue, the continuity issues are increasing in prevalence; the shatter graph for the Theta continuity arc extending from zero three eleven is increasing in complexity. At this time it is impossible to determine which faction is acting. We are seeing bleed-over from Alphas oh nineteen, zero four ninety one, zero six twenty four, beta two one twelve, gamma zero nine nine one, and lambda oh three sixteen."

The two weeks of leave had all but erased the immediate strategic concerns from her mind, rather she had been more focused on reconciling the issue of Charles Tucker III as her ancestor and the realization that somewhere in the span of the universe there was likely another like her who had been sired by the myriad of Tuckers that existed. Everything regarding Theta Zero Three Eleven in the current continuity time frame had been wiped out by the data raid, though part of her seemed to remember seeing something a large clan of partial Vulcans bearing Tucker ancestry. Her mate had been decidedly less reserved about the revelation that they were, in fact, distantly related and both bore human blood. Their offspring didn't seem to exhibit any compromised behavior as far as they were aware and the family doctor had indicated that the percentage of human DNA seemed to only have a phenotypic effect on his appearance that, while peculiar among Vulcans, was not totally unheard of. There were even some theories that an earlier intelligence had, at some point in the span of history introduced extant species to various worlds to see how the populations interacted. It would explain certain DNA artifacts that occasionally were expressed in various species that would not, homogenously, demonstrate certain genetic traits. The papers written on the subject were routinely dismissed as bordering on the fraudulent even where the findings were quite compelling in their presentation of fact and demonstrating the conclusions brought about by their research. Notably there was evidence that the cranial adaptation of Klingons had been influenced by a gene that was found to be of Naussican origin, Rigellians demonstrated Vulcan genes, and Certain combinations of skin, eye, and hair color among her own people were actually artifact human genes even as most Vulcans dismissed these elements as mutations, ignoring the fact that these same genes were the result of mutation in humans. Interestingly the study had also demonstrated that Ferengi genetic structure was so thoroughly divorced from that of the logical progenitor species it was assumed they evolved from that the authors speculated that, perhaps, Ferenginar had been a dumping ground for a mass inter-breeding experiment.

All of this was of little relevance as she found she had a hard time accepting the validity of the findings, but in it lay a small hope that their child's aberrant genes were the result of those ancient human traits that had worked into their gene pool millennia before. If the tests could be proved to be wrong, if it was just a mix-up produced by a series of genetic markers that _seemed_ to indicate the introduction of human DNA into their family lines hundreds of years ago, she could feel pure again. Her mate questioned why she had felt impure to begin with. He had used a suitably logical framework explaining how the genetic diversity produced by human DNA had a net benefit for the Vulcan people, but she had still not wanted to accept it, had not wanted to believe it, mostly because it reminded her of her unchecked emotions that still gnawed at her.

"What is our course of action?" She inquired.

"Captain Charles Tucker seems to be on the verge of getting to the bottom of it in as far as he has the capacity."

T'Var laced her fingers, resting her hands in her lap, "It is logical to assume he would make the connection between species seven one three three in his universe and this universe, despite whatever disadvantages he may suffer from."

Sivik's eyes said he detected the couched racism in the comment, but he proceeded with the briefing without calling her to task, "This is not the result of Sphere Builder influence, it is merely made to appear so, this is the movement of the same unknown faction fomenting conflict directly in theta zero three eleven."

She sat more upright, "What do you mean?"

"We have a continuity track from Alpha zero one nine," he brought up a projection display of the Delphic Expanse, the abnormal space created by sphere influence plotted as a dully glowing orange occluding large sections of space. "These images were produced from their space in twenty one fifty three. As you can see, the spheres have been manipulating the space of these areas consistently." He pulled up a second projection, in the image the space of the Expanse was completely normal, no alterations present, no spheres at all, it was almost as if the alterations had never been made at all, as if the spheres had never existed, "These images were produced yesterday, taken in twenty one fifty six, a reverse track shows that all Sphere Builder influence on this region of space was retroactively eliminated with the alteration track beginning as a roll back the day after the Xindi attack probe made its attack run on Earth's mid-western Atlantic in twenty one fifty three. Someone went back and scrubbed the time line. And before you ask, we have no idea whom is responsible."

A series of thumping footfalls outside the office momentarily caught her attention seconds before the door chime sounded.

"Enter." Sivik answered curtly.

The door slip open revealing the massive frame of Director Thr'ksss utterly filled the entrance, she ducked her head and entered the room, the floor quaking at her half ton mass.

"Director." T'Var declared as she rocketed out of her seat.

"Sit down, sit down, no need for formality." The universal translator declared over the sound of her guttural growls, clicks, and hisses.

Sivik nodded to the director who returned the gesture taking a position to the side of the office to observe both. "As I said, we have no idea which parties are responsible for this but it is clear that they have been manipulating multiple reality schema."

Sivik pulled up another projection, an image of two Xindi reptilian ships in loose formation, a cut away chart began streaming information about both, "These two ships are our case in point; both are the exact same ship from two different continuity tracks of Alpha primary. The only difference is the crew, the ship on the left originated from alpha zero four nine one, the right is native to zero nineteen, at some point orders were cut in four ninety one to transfer the original crew of the ship to another craft before it was slated to enter an anomaly to transport it to zero nineteen. The only exception was the cook who was somehow overlooked."

T'Var suspected that the director being there was not an accident or even incidental, "What is my mandate?"

"Ostensibly" the Gorn began, "To take a genetic sample from Major Musashibo Benkei aboard the U.S.S. Tirpitz from the theta zero three eleven reality. He is a person of interest to us as a distaff ancestor of Hikaru Sulu."

T'Var furrowed her brow, "Alpha primary's Hikaru Sulu?"

"Ostensibly, we want to compare genetic variances." The she-Gorn replied evenly, hands cradled over the robed expanse of her abdomen, the gesture seeming strangely demure for the massive reptile.

"What is my mandate, _un_-ostensibly?"

"To assist Charles Tucker to piece together what he hasn't already pieced together." Sivik answered.

"So I must be his brain?" T'Var inquired with some barely varnished ire.

Thr'ksss let out a screeching trill, "No, he is more than adequately gifted in that regard, you are simply to act as his data aggregator, his attentions are split between multiple concerns at the moment."

"Such as?" She inquired, not sure if she was entirely sure she wanted to know what possible depravities were consuming his human mind.

"The tactical situation, the well-being of that universe's Enterprise and her crew, the mental well-being of that universe's Jonathan Archer specifically, how he will be able to return his ship and its crew to their continuity arc, and the impending pon-farr of his mate." Thr'ksss replied, the universal translator somehow capturing the almost pedagogical matronly way she answered the question.

T'Var almost lurched uncomfortably at the mention of pon-farr. "Is there any information we need reveal to him?"

"We will leave that to your judgment." The Gorn replied evenly, her manner and demeanor seeming like a matriarch despite the species differences.

The Vulcan stood, "With your leave I will begin preparations of insertion."

The Gorn stepped over, gently but firmly taking the briefing PADD from T'Var then with a smooth gesture crushing it in her massive clawed hands, "All official records regarding this mission are being prepared as we speak, there must not be any record of your actual mission, do you understand?"

Despite the hisses, clicks, and growls there was something kind sounding; firm, commanding, but with a sort of softness that seemed to view T'Var as one of her own brood, the fact that she, as a Vulcan, could pick up on it was strange to her. Even now, little was known or understood about Gorn culture, they were intensely private, perhaps even more so than Vulcans but there seemed to be reason to believe they were an intensely family oriented people who were fiercely protective and unswervingly nurturing. Everything about Director Thr'ksss should have been intimidating to T'Var as a mammal. In the ancient feral past if Gorn and Vulcan had occupied the same world, the Vulcans would have been forced to live in fear of the intelligent, stalwart, physically dominating species. Gorn were apex predators by every definition of the term; sentient quasi-crocodilians who could out-think even sentient prey if it came to it. Surely they would have felt no ban on consuming another sentient being if game were scarce, yet there had never been a single reported incident of Gorn consuming another sentient being despite their natural adaptation to doing so.

But in spite of this, she felt comfort in the Director's presence, always had, except whereas it pertained to the professional conduct of her assignment. It was easy to be intimidated by one's "boss".

T'Var nodded to the towering mass of scale and muscle, "Yes, director, I understand. May I, perhaps, inquire as to the reason for the duplicity on our part?"

Thr'ksss looked over to her Romulan subordinate who gave a single quick nod, "There is some concern as to whether or not there has been some infiltration of our organization by the actors who are fomenting this current aberrant series of continuity alterations."

T'Var almost couldn't hide the concern, "I see, I will operate accordingly."

"On that note…" The Gorn declared, pulling the universal translator from her robes, deftly opening the small device with a claw then scraping out the isolinear gel from the device, rubbing it between the talon-ed fore-finger and thumb before placing a new gel packet in place, she was destroying any record of the conversation, "We must remain vigilant in the extreme, agent T'Var, but I have every faith in your ability."

The Vulcan nodded, "With your permission?"

"You are excused." Sivik granted in an even tone.

Thr'ksss watched as the Vulcan female left the office before turning back to her subordinate, "She seemed bothered."

Sivik sighed, something he rarely did in the presence of his underlings, "She has a lot of unresolved baggage about Charles Tucker."

"Still?"

"She sees him as her family's great secret shame and blames much of her clan's plight on him." The Romulan answered, once again finding his seat, feeling comfortable enough around the director to do so. She had recruited him some forty years ago now, and his entire adult life had been spent with her clawed fingers gently at times, firmly at others, guiding him to his current position. She was almost like a second mother to him, but more than that, also a friend. "Her parents were V'tosh Katur, after she learned of the human DNA in their line, she blamed it on Charles Tucker."

"V'tosh…-?"

"V'tosh Katur; Vulcans without logic, they are a sect that seeks to embrace, understand, and temper emotion rather than suppress it. Among their people it is still frowned upon to this very day."

"Odd, I would think their people had advanced far enough by this point to open themselves back to that potential." Thr'ksss replied, maneuvering herself to sit cautiously on the couch in the office to ensure her sudden application of massive weight wouldn't destroy the piece of furniture.

Sivik bobbed his brows, rolling his head ruefully, "I guess you could say that among mammals it is still common to rebel against your parents. Especially against the father since he is always, somehow, the outsider between mother and child.

Thr'ksss screeched, "Fortunate that our males spend much of the time tending the eggs. They say a Gorn is born knowing their father's scent from the time before they have left the egg."

Sivik furrowed his brows, "It was my understanding that a clutch typically had multiple sires."

Thr'ksss trilled again, "Lurid to you mammals, I know! However, there is usually no more than three males that will stay attached to the clutch as care-givers. The genetics are of less importance than the imprinting; we do have a simple genome after all, so paternity is rarely an issue as the 'family resemblance' is a trifle generic."

Sivik didn't laugh, but not for lack of desire to do so. "Oh the simplicity if we could all lay eggs."

Thr'ksss's screech was louder this time, "You try carrying a clutch of fifty eggs and say that! Even with it being born into my instincts I never got used to the sensation. What about you though, Sivik, did you rebel against your parents?"

Sivik let out a chuckle this time, "Yes, and you started it, sweeping me up with your charms!"

Thr'ksss shrieked again, rubbing the dermal plates on her cheek as she often did when thoroughly amused.

"My parents always hoped I would become an artist."

Even with the limitations of Gorn facial expression, the way her eye ridges and lips contorted let Sivik read the incredulity, "But…your paintings are awful!"

"Fortunate for the universe, then, that I did decide to rebel against my parents." Sivik had to work hard to keep his expression neutral but the smile still pulled his face into an expression of amusement.

* * *

><p>Trip knew he wasn't going to sleep, knew for a fact that closing his eyes was just some subtle unconscious desire that would force him into a sleeping state despite the fact that his lids weren't heavy, and despite his desire to do so, his brain wouldn't allow him to sleep. It was the worry, the constant gnawing concern over what he would do, what would be necessary to complete the mission, such as he understood it, here in this universe…and upon doing so, how he would get his ship and his crew back home. More troublesome was what he could feel from T'Pol; he wasn't sure if it was this T'Pol or <em>his<em> T'Pol, but there was this sort of subtle urgency he could feel in his very cells. The timetable that sat in his mind was spurring him; _it's time, it's time, IT'S TIME!_ He had received information through the office of Ambassador Soval about pon-farr. The report was titled "The Burning Time" in some subtle stab of either Vulcan cultural and racial denial or a ham-fisted attempt at poetics but he had not read it. All he knew what is had to be special, he had to make it special for T'Pol's sake and no Vulcan academic approach would allow him to approach it with the proper level of reverence and mystery that it demanded. He shifted again, rolling on his side, his right arm wrapping around the pillow to shift it under his head as he stubbornly fought to keep his eyes shut as if the physical mnemonic would force his brain into compliance.

_Shut down, shut off, go to sleep!_

He felt hot, uncomfortable; every sound was like nails on a chalk-board or the scraping of a mason-jar lid. He reached beneath the sheet, adjusting his testicles from the sudden binding sensation of twisted boxer shorts, the hairs on his legs seemed to rub and tie each other, pulling uncomfortably. The small of his back ached no matter which way he shifted, he could smell the sour odor of sweat even though he had just showered. His eyes burned despite having them shut, so much so that he wanted to open them just so when he closed them again there would be some relief but to do so would be to acknowledge wakefulness and he was trying to defeat that monster at the moment.

Maybe he should go see their T'Pol, maybe they could have a neuro-pressure session and then he'd be able to fall asleep. No…no no no no. That wouldn't do at all, she was half ready to pounce him as it was, maybe to strangle him, maybe to fuck the living daylights out him , maybe both and in either possible order. He knew she needed the relaxation, as did he, but just how much could he be tempted to stray? How much would he be able to avoid rationalizing if put in that situation.

_It wouldn't even be like you were cheating._

Damnit, Jon had a powerful point when it was presented to a tired mind. She had to be getting close to her fever too, and what would she do when it hit? There was almost no way they would be able to get to Vulcan in time, no way she could get to Koss to slake the fever, his counterpart here was out of commission too. If there were any similarities between this Reed or Archer and the Reed and Archer he knew there would be willing partners available for her on the ship, but could they fulfill the role? Would she accept them in the role? They might need to know if the situation presented itself, he resolved himself to get out of bed and read that report. He opened his eyes and looked over to his console on the desk across his room when he saw the shape. It didn't even have time to move before his hand sprung to the bedside table grabbing the M-52 that lay there. That's when he noticed the alarm clock, a bizarre haze of light seeming to float just away from the numbers; glowing with the same color as the display and seeming to move forward with slow inexorability.

Everything felt wrong, and the nervous impulses going to his brain began to recall Krios.

"That's twice you've done this t'me." He growled, "N' both times its gotten you dangerously close to bein' shot."

"Captain Tucker." She replied, unsure what else to say, not sure if she wanted to say anything else.

"What is it this time? You couldn't have gotten t'me earlier, like when I wasn' tryin' to sleep?"

"Our information was limited, we simply knew you would be in your quarters." She answered.

"Your intel needs work, you're s'posed to be from the future, can't be that hard to figure out what time is best to catch me via trial'n error."

How illogical of him, "That would require multiple time line intrusions to find the optimal point, when I could simply speak to you know."

"Call it 'courtesy'."

"Illogical."

"And then there's Vulcan…"

"Fallacious jingoism."

"Accurate interpretation."

A point there to him, she would likely have been pre-disposed not to so rudely invade the privacy of a Vulcan, but she would never admit that to him. He pulled the sheet aside and went to stand, prompting a sudden stab of fear in her that was accentuated by what he said next.

"There was a time that a strange woman in my room while I was in bed would have been welcome." He paused as he stood up, still at least partially clothed to her relief but the fact that it was only partial still prompted the fear of being overpowered and taken by the human, ignoring the fact that he was a variation on her progenitor, ignoring the fact that chronomorphic incest was in idea so repellent it made her mind reel, ignoring the fact that at least part of her was constantly tortured by the fact that, in a way, that was exactly what had occurred between her and her sa-telsu, the fact he was human made it so much worse.

Then some stab of instinct took over leaving her conscious reeling is disgust; he was pleasant to look at, excellently formed, powerfully built, long in limb and muscular. Perhaps this wasn't too dissimilar from what he looked like in Alpha primary where her ancestors had been sired by that version of this man on T'Pol. Perhaps that was why it had happened; the base undercurrent of Vulcan lust had allowed this...that…whatever…animal into her bed and between her legs, inside of her.

"What are you doing?" she croaked, startled and shamed at the sound of her voice.

"Grabbin' some pants an'a shirt." He replied as he with a quick motion dropped the ammunition container from the grip of the firearm in his hand and working the reciprocating upper assembly ejected the self-contained projectile package from the weapon. It was executed with startling speed and fluidity.

He reached into a drawer and produced a meticulously squared brick of clothing, slipping first into the shirt then the sweat pants with great speed, "Please, have'a seat, there's a chair behind you."

"I am not here for pleasantries, captain." She protested, her voice finding its proper timbre again.

His eyes fixed on hers in the darkness, she could see the twinkle of them in the almost non-existent light in the room, there were no windows and the clock seemed to be the only light source beyond the pale fluorescence of the desk light behind her that silhouetted her and helped illuminate him. Yet somehow his eyes found hers and seemed to trap her in place.

"Just sit in the chair."

She did, not certain why, but she did.

"Would you like some tea or water?"

"Why?" She couldn't help but ask.

"Because you're a guest in my quarters, an uninvited guest, but a guest none the less and there're certain things one does when they have'a guest."

"Yet you ordered me to sit."

She thought he smirked but couldn't be sure in the low light, "Because I can set a certain number'a ground rules. If you'd been that averse to sittin' you shoulda said 'I would prefer to stand'."

He was hard to gauge, quite unflappable it seemed. Still, she could not let any personal animus color the disposition of the conversation and if he was going to be courteous in as much as he had the capacity to be so, she should reciprocate.

"I require neither," Then after a pause, remembering the correct human custom, "thank you."

"Alright then." He reached into another drawer, producing a bottle and a squat glass, opening the stopper her poured a small amount of strong smelling liquid in the glass, her nose immediately identified the presence of hydrocarbons, alcohol.

"You are imbibing liquor?" She tried not to sound shocked, and barely managed.

"Yeah, I am, you scared the livin' tar outta me."

Intriguing, nothing about his reaction seemed to conform with human expression of fear, "You did not seem frightened by any metric by which I could measure."

He shrugged, draining the contents from the glass and setting it back on the dresser top, "I'm coded to react t'fear differently than human base-line."

"I had not considered the genetic engineering aspect."

He shrugged again, "To be fair I overlook it alotta the time too." He poured himself another small amount of liquor and quickly tipping it back returned the bottle to the dresser, "Now, if you're checkin' in as my case officer you don' haveta worry, I haven't told a soul 'bout our little chat on Krios."

He crossed back to his bunk, pulling up the sheets in a quick meticulous fashion then sat down on the edge, "Alright, let's get down'ta brass tacks."

* * *

><p><strong>[! Author's Note !]<strong>

**Okay, calling it now, (until I change my mind again) this is now the mid-way point for Book 1, which means we're going to be right in the neighborhood of 100 Chapters when its done, and y'all will probably be so sick of these characters that you'll never want to even look at a TTP story again. Thus my diabolical plot will be realized! But, in all seriousness, I'll probably be doing another incarnation of the Blurb Edition at some point that will encompass all the ideas I had for a possible book 3 that I never went with. I have the final chapter of Book 1 written, I'm just filling in everything in between now.**


	50. Chapter 50

Trip charged into the CIC, his pace and expression forcing the FMF OPSEC to allow him through the hatch without the normal confirmation and security procedure, he would have to answer for the oversight later, but they were combat effective and in these moments expediency transcended bureaucratic practice. Nassir was on the 1MC still delivering the general quarters call ship-wide as Andy Snellis extended a mug of coffee as Trip passed. He accepted the mug with a nod and drained half the contents in one long gulp. For such a perfunctory act Snellis had prepared the cup well; plenty of sugar and a hint of cream making it a palatable caffeine delivery method and prompting Tucker to take an unnecessary moment to turn back to the 3IC, lifting the mug with an appreciative nod and appraising expression.

"You missed yer callin' Mister Snellis, you shoulda been a barista."

Nassir was bristling for combat, approaching without extending a single pleasantry. "Electronic Warfare picked up twenty two reactor blooms, closest cluster of seven at eight hundred fifteen thousand kilometers and holding fourteen degrees to port."

"What are the other concentrations lookin' like?"

"One cluster of ten, nine hundred ninety three thousand klicks distance twenty four degrees to starboard and a group of five, eight hundred ninety four thousand kilometers to our aft. The group of five is advancing at one fifty eighth impulse."

Trip contemplated all this for a moment that felt like an eternity; could they square off against that many ships even if they didn't all come at once? What was the attrition breaking point? Going against Romulans they had been able to enjoy the support of destroyers and frigates, any of which seemed to handily outgun this _Enterprise_ and the one time it had been a stand up twelve on one, the majority of the Romulan ships had high tailed it once they saw what kind of guns _Tirptiz _was packing.

Trip stood quietly a moment, taking another sip from the mug contemplatively. Nassir was struck by his lack of concern, he could almost sympathize with the sentiment if it wasn't for the fact there were just so damn many enemy combatants and he didn't trust this universe's _Enterprise_ to be able to put up anything resembling a fight. Still, he trusted Tucker's super-charged brain was working on a solution to the problem. As much as part of Al-Sistani really wanted to see the T put through her paces like she was designed too, he had to accept the fact that the potential for repair or relief was all but non-existent.

"Run out our dorsal batteries and lock targetin' solutions to planetary strategically viable locations." Tucker replied evenly, voice devoid of affect.

"I thought that was a bluff." Nassir protested, brows knitting with concern.

"We're buyin' our bluff, now." Tucker replied, his face inhumanly calm but giving no indicator it was an MAOA reaction, "They've gotta consider that we're more'n willin' to poison the well."

"Standard demil charges won't cook off any reaction mass." Al-Sistani declared, covertly positing the question as to whether he should have gone ahead and proceeded with the faulty order to emplace Anti-matter charges. When they had been trying to spook Degra, Nassir had deliberately given the wrong designation for the anti-matter demolition charges as a sort of quiet confirmation that Tucker was perpetrating the elaborate ruse he sensed from him.

"Doe'n't really matter, even if they're hard-target emplaced the impact'll scram any power-plant they've got down there. We don't have to completely gut'em, just knock out the lights."

"Sir, I recommend we put a warning shot in their second largest contiguous oceanic body, it has a large enough benthic expanse to dissipate the energy but might give them enough to think about to rein in their boats." Nassir offered, he'd been considering the potential of putting a shot across the bow to let the Xindi know they were serious without actually having to bombard civilian targets.

Any time orbital bombardment came into play there were invariably going to be casualties no matter how accurate the fire. Not just at the target locations but as the result of the associated seismic effect and as the result of power loss. A shot into the relatively shallow ocean would make for a fantastic display of firepower with some tidal effect but with the wide benthic basin it wouldn't be more than a foot or two of surge as the energy dissipated.

Trip nodded, moving the mug from his lips to speak, "Good thinkin', authorize one round'a one twenty five standard declination, zero demil, on our next pass, one eighth impulse."

"Mister Snellis," Tucker turned to the 3IC, "Get Ener'prise on the horn'n let 'em know to get on our six for the trip 'round."

"Aye aye, sir."

Al-Sistani turned to the gunnery fire control and relayed the order for the strike package before turning back to the CO, "You think they'll blink?"

"They might, they might not, but we're not gonna look like we're gonna chicken out now. Point is it might give some of 'em pause, 'n that could limit the num'er we have to engage should they decide to call the bluff."

"You think we could maybe get Degra to rein them in?"

Tucker huffed derisively, "That sonuvabitch didn' seem to interested in doin' much of anything."

"Maybe he was calling our bluff too, sir." Nassir offered, thinking it was pertinent to bring the point up.

"Might have."

"Maybe we should post him up front and center and watch the rounds out." Nassir lilted on the final word, as if making the statement a question rather than a declaration.

Tucker took another sip of the coffee and nodded, "Good thinkin'." He looked over to the Chief of the Boat, "Cob, get the brig on the horn 'n get our prisoner escorted to the bridge, double time if you please, mister Glen."

"Aye, sir."

Nassir stepped back in front of his commanding officer, "And if they don't swallow the bluff, sir?"

Tucker's jaw set to the side, eyes locking on the holo-display with a fiery glint, "I'm gonna blow 'em all to hell."

"Roger that, sir."

* * *

><p>T'Les watched as the sehlat approached Charles Jr. and began rubbing up against his legs, making a low chuffing yowl, looking up at the human male expectantly where he stood manning the outdoor grill. It was an uncharacteristic affection behavior that she had not witnessed in the creature before. Even with Solan the creature did not display overt affection so much as a sort of patriarchal concern with the wellbeing of his surrogate cub. In the wild he would be of breeding age and would likely have found at least one female to sire cubs on, but on Earth the closest matching species did not range in the south eastern United States or on the North American continent at all for that matter. She had some passing interest in discovering whether or not a sehlat could be mated to Panthera Tigris or Panthera Leo. She was relatively certain there would be no possibility for offspring being produced with North America's Puma Concolor. Earth at one time had a nearly identical species in the form of the Smilidon Fatalis but the last known examples of this species had died off some ten thousand years prior and science seemed to show no interest in resurrecting the species via genetic engineering.<p>

"Well, how do you like it? Rare, medium, done?" Charles asked looking down at the saber-tooth with amusement.

T'Les found it odd that most sentients, and particularly humans had a tendency to engage in conversation with creatures, object, and concepts that had no means by which to complete the interactive dynamic. Some theories postulated that in so doing and responding in-proxy it stimulated mental function and provided a means for problem solving. The sehlat, interestingly enough, seemed to understand it was being engaged and replied with a kind of whine followed by a series of low chuffs.

"Blue rare, huh? Yeah, you seem like you would be blue rare." Charles lifted two of the steaks from the grill, the sides still showing the deep burgundy color of raw meat with wisps of steam trailing from the browned upper and lower surfaces. Putting them on a platter he strode a few feet away from the grill before turning back to face the sehlat.

"Sit." He commanded.

The creature tilted its head.

"Sit." Charles once again ordered, prompting the smilidon to turn in a circle then look back up at the human.

The elder human spoke again, issuing the same command with no variation in tone or intensity from his previous orders. T'Les wondered if, perhaps, the human was engaging in an utterly pointless behavior. Sehlats were not known for their obedience, the most one could usually expect was to ensure that it followed a given predictable behavior pattern. In ages past, particularly war sehlats had to be trained from infancy to accept direction from a rider or handler.

"Sit."

T'Les was just about to voice her opinion that the creature might lack the discipline necessary to perform the act when it settled on its hind haunches, and looked back up at the human. Charles reached In with his left hand and gave the creature a scratch on the right cheek and under the chin then set the platter down in place right before the hulking smilidon. The sehlat let out a satisfied chuff then lowered its head to begin licking at the bloody juice filling the platter.

"Remarkable." T'Les voiced at the behavior.

"Even most solitary critters understand something about a pack dynamic and dominance. All you have to do is let them know who is in charge."

T'Les cocked a brow, "Is that not arbitrary though?"

"It's probably best he learn how to behave around people. He's got to be properly socialized and accustomed to boundaries. It's just as dangerous for him as for anyone around him if he lets instinct take over and acts like a wild animal." Charles replied as he returned to the grill.

"A fair assessment, but do you think it is working?"

Charles shrugged with a grin, "Guess we'll know first time he tries to eat me."

Elaine spoke up from where she was slicing some red bulbous watery fruit into a salad of greens. "Oh, come off it Charlie, you know he'd never do that. He'd take one bite and realize you're just plain rotten."

The creature lifted its head, almost as if knowing it was being discussed, its muzzle matted with blood and juice from the almost-raw steaks. Solan immediately walked up to the creature and pointed at its face, beginning to protest in the pidgin English of youth.

"Yo'r face is duhrty!"

The sehlat chuffed at his little companion and continued to lick his furry chops.

"Kween yo'r face, it duhrty!"

The creature chuffed again then lowered its head to the platter where it bit into the streak, working its front and side teeth to sheer off a bite sized piece; for a creature his size, the bite consisted of almost a half-pound of flesh.

"What is he normally fed; I am certain that flesh fit for human consumption must be charged at a premium?" T'Les inquired, genuinely interested if still a bit put off by the human proclivity for meat.

Charles grunted, "There's still a lot of hunters up in Georgia and North Florida, near as I can tell is T'Pol buys him a quarter dear and that keeps him in meat in addition to the lion feed they get for him, and one of my cousins took a gator a few months back and we sent over the tail, he really liked that."

"Gator?"

"Alligator Mississipiensis; a mostly aquatic predatory reptile." T'Pol declared as she approached from the house at a brisk pace, her face flushed to a deep olive shade.

"How do you want your steak, T'Pol?" Charles inquired from where he stood by the grill, his expression and body language becoming a bit more rigid likely in response to his daughter-in-law's agitated demeanor of late.

"Rare." T'Pol replied in a clipped tone, surveying the area with almost uncomfortable intensity.

She locked her eyes on Solan where he sat on the ground in front of the platter, using his small but abnormally strong hands to pull the steak into chunks for the sehlat to more easily eat. The smilidon had lowered itself full to the ground and watched as the tiny half-vulcan pulled the steak apart and would crane its head forward to snatch up the morsels as they were freed one by one. "Eat swowy, its good fo'r yo'r tummy." He quietly instructed the beast with an almost pedagogical air.

T'Pol crossed to the table on the patio grabbing a hand full of napkins then approached, kneeling behind her offspring patiently while he finished assisting his furry companion.

"He's such a sweet boy." Elaine cooed softly watching her grandson as he dutifully prepared the sehlat's meat and arranged the chunks that hadn't been snatched into a pile. The smilidon sat up and leaned its head forward, rubbing its forhead and ridge of its brows against his tiny charge while making a satisfied chuffing noise.

"Dere, all done." Solan declared with suddenly stolid resolution. He immediately turned to his mother and lifted his hands with spread fingers as she brought up the napkins and began wiping off his fingers.

"That was very kind of you to assist him with his meal, tal-kam." T'Pol said softly to her child, "However, next time what might you want to use next time to accomplish that task?"

"Fork, anna knife!" He replied with animated glee. He as trying to used better elocution, struggling to be more precise for his mother, but he couldn't hide his satisfaction at her praise.

"You are too young to handle a knife, but you can always use two forks."

T'Les watched her daughter with a bit of muted concern, the fact she was consuming meat still bothered her but she could almost understand the logical necessity that she fortify herself for the plak-tow, the fever was on her already, but she was still in control, however that control was starting to slip. If she were to admit it to herself, she was more than a bit tempted to sample the human faire herself. Charles and Elaine had prepared a great variety of fruits and vegetables for this, their first meal all together since the period after Solan's birth. On the right side of the grill Charles had skewers of human gourds with layered onion, peppers, and the red fruit they called tomatoes sizzling and the combination of the vegetables and the scent of the scorched flesh of the steaks was significant enough to cause T'Les' mouth to water. Elaine had explained that among humans the process of eating caused the brain to release hormones and neuro-chemicals that promoted contentment. Food that was pleasing to the palette and the company of family and friends heightened the effect and produced a higher level of contentment, this in turn promoted healing and repair of the body. The ritualization and ostentation of human cuisine was designed to optimize the mental and physical health of those consuming it.

It was peculiarly logical, the process of feeding could be used to further reinforce family, community and peer bonds. Without latent telepathy, this exercise to be of critical importance to fostering cohesion among human social and familial groups. Even the complication of the human palette seemed to be geared towards this end as they consumed foods that elicited various reactions as the result of seasoning and spiciness. Certainly it would make for interesting research material as an outsider who would be able to perform a longitudinal survey of human cultural groups, their interactive dynamics, and where the ritual of the family meal sat in these communities. Previous interactions with Charles Jr. and Elaine had demonstrated that the Tucker Clan including many of its extant branches still viewed the idea of the family coming together to dine at the same time held a high level of cultural significance. As long as their children had resided in their home it was expected that, at the very least, supper would be eaten together around the family table. The importance the two placed on family was readily apparent in their willingness to place their grandchild before themselves and she found herself in the peculiar situation of having to reconcile that they considered T'Pol as family now by dint of her marriage to their son.

"Did your son and T'Pol ever complete a human marriage ceremony?" T'Les asked suddenly, as the thought abruptly entered her mind.

Elaine smirked, "No, they did not, and let me tell you it has made for some interesting conversations with our kin."

T'Les cocked a brow, "How so?"

T'Pol rolled her eyes, "This again…"

Charles piped up from where he stood near the grill, "The law is kind of fuzzy about the legitimacy of a Vulcan marriage in terms of Earth law, so while the courts are wrangling with the question, Trip and T'Pol are not by the strictest definition, married, on Earth. So of course we've had a few folks assert they were livin' in sin, and a few others that are wondering if Trip is really off the market."

"Living in sin?" T'Les cocked her right brow again, a bit of amused skepticism in her voice.

"Human custom is that if a man and woman are to cohabitate they should do so under the aegis of marriage, mother." T'Pol declared, a peculiarly harsh set to her eyes.

"And I would assume off-the-market would be reference to his status as a single male?"

Elaine nodded, "That about sums it up, Trip was always something of a heart-breaker."

"Peculiar, he always struck me as having a rather virtuous personality." T'Les commented.

T'Pol glared at her mother in disbelief more than anything resembling anger, "Have you forgotten what occurred the first morning at your home?"

Indeed she had, or, rather, she had suppressed the memory as it had not given an adequate enough picture of who Charles Tucker III truly was. Still, for the lack of propriety of that event, there was certainly an understandable degree of logic as was revealed later by the priest.

"In the moment I admit I was taken aback by what had occurred but the fact that the two of you had bonded prior to those events excuses the breach of decorum in as much as it was acceptable behavior for a mated couple." T'Les demurred.

Elaine cut eyes over to Charles who returned her glance with one that showed clear amusement.

"Looks like y'all have developed quite a little habit there." The patriarch commented, stifling a grin at his de-facto daughter-in-law.

T'Pol looked off and away with an expression of faux-dignity on her face that was at odds with the deepening green that was creeping into her skin, "I place all the blame squarely in the hot-blooded southern nature that Trip inherited."

"Takes two to tango, sweetheart." Elaine teased.

"And as nears as I can figure Trip never asked a girl for a dance." Charles crowed, prompting an admonishing "Charlie!" from his wife.

T'Pol dug her nails into the table where she sat between the two matrons and bit her lower lip. T'Les could almost smell the surge of hormones in her daughter, she was ready to mate, but still in enough control to resist it, but that strain was growing more and more intense, she had a week at most before the fever was fully on her and she would have no choice. Strangely, Elaine seemed to sense it too.

"You know, sweety, there are…" She paused, trying to find some measure of decorum for what she would say next, "devices to help with this kind of problem."

T'Pol turned to look at her mother-in-law with totally unexpected candor, "They don't work."

T'Les flushed herself when she suddenly understood the implication that had been made. Such items had not been produced on Vulcan since the awakening, "Have you availed yourself of such apparatus?"

T'Pol was too tired, to sexually frustrated, or too comfortable with the company to be embarrassed, "I have availed myself of those sorts of items more than once as a recourse when Trip was indisposed during the development of the Iowa class warships."

Charles knitted his brow, "Trip couldn't make it home for even…"

T'Pol shook her head, "No, he was regularly putting in sixty hours straight at the research and construction facilities to expedite the process."

Elaine's expression became sad, "You poor thing."

"I fear that at least part of the issue was that Trip was not attending to his own frustrations so any initial satisfaction I experienced only compounded his frustration which then fed back to me." T'Pol lowered her head with a measure of shame coloring her expression, "I also could not reconcile the emotional reaction that was associated as I felt like I was engaged in extra-marital activity with an inanimate object."

Charles chuckled wryly, "Don't feel bad, you can't cheat with a piece of latex." He then cut eyes over to Elaine and winked.

"Charlie Tucker." She admonished bashfully as pink crept into her cheeks and forehead.

As if to pre-empt the conversation before it ran into an uncompromising appraisal of female sexuality he looked to his daughter-in-law and asked in an even tone, "How many days until the boat leaves dock?"

"I will be boarding tomorrow night at twenty three hundred zulu."

Charles nodded, "Where is your point of embarkation?"

"I will receive a site-to-site transport via Canaveral to LaGrange one, the Sprauge slips its moorings at oh dark fifteen." She answered, prompting Charles to grin her and prompting her to arch a brow at the human, "What?"

"You're talking just like a sailor, T'Pol, I guess we got you trained right after all."

"A peculiar choice of conversation prefacing a meal, is it not?" T'Les finally spoke up having been thoroughly silenced by the startling revelations made in the course of the talk.

Elaine laughed, "The way to someone's heart is through their stomach."

"I am not certain that is the relevant piece of anatomy being discussed." The Vulcan matriarch countered archly.

"Oh honey, haven't you ever had a meal that just made you ready to 'go'?" Elaine inquired by way of riposte.

T'Les thought for a split second and realized there were no fewer than six such instances when a meal immediate prefaced intimacy with her late husband. At the time she had written it off as some aphrodisiac property in the food served but upon further introspection she realized it was not that the fruits and vegetables served were any different to what she was normally accustomed too nor where the spices used for seasoning. The preparation, however, had been exceptional in terms of palatability and that compounding her natural affection for her mate had resulted in a peculiarly strong desire for sex. In retrospect the combination of spices with the chemical properties of the fruits and vegetables could have produced the chemical effect, similarly the shell fish her husband had consumed had been known to produce such effects but as she remembered the events as they had unfolded, she had felt the wash of desire before he had even lifted a morsel to his mouth.

He had never need to coerce her into sexual behavior, so the thought that the meal had been specifically prepared to that end was immediately discarded, but perhaps it had served to increase the intensity of the encounter which it certainly had. "I suppose I would be able to concede that point."

* * *

><p>Archer sat behind the desk in the cramped office perusing some eyes-only documents his eyes weren't supposed to be seeing given the fact that his star hadn't officially been pinned yet, still, if this was going to be his new boat he might as well learn the ins and outs of it ahead of time. The first Triumph class cruiser would displace roughly one fourth less than the Iowa class but she was long and lithe and definitely looked more majestic than the aggressive forward sweep and harsh hull protrusions of the ship she had originally intended to be. Trip had originally designed the Triumph to be the Iowa but had decided that a larger warp field and more firepower was the way to go and as a result the long sweep of what was now the Triumph had turned into the be-fanged look of the <em>Tirpitz<em>. It had just as strong a power plant and would be able to attain the same speeds, currently being projected as a theoretical warp 8.7 at the red-line but with smaller nacelles that produced a more compact subspace envelope than was needed for the massive displacement of the Iowa class.

The part that bit at him the most, though, was the fact that Admirals didn't command ships, they just got ferried around on them while planning the grand scope and scale of MCS's strategy. Still, the fact they were giving him _a_ ship said something. Even the strategic geniuses like Nguyen, Gottel, and Yost were relegated to getting a ship sortied to act as flagship without any boat to call their own. Most of them could expect little more than being stuck on destroyers and frigates delegating attack and defense orders for squadrons of smaller ships or relying on a single or lightly paired CG to do the heavy lifting. And above all…_Enterprise_…

He couldn't honestly imagine himself on the bridge of any boat that didn't bear that name again and, at least part of him, was more willing to resign his commission than ever have to be presented with the chance that he would stand on a bridge that didn't belong to the namesake of the Lady E. He found himself vaguely wondering if any of his crew would be going with them. Certainly Malcolm Reed had his eyes set on one of the big boats like _Tirptiz_, and with the next three of line set to be sortied within a year and a half it was possible he wouldn't see the inside of one until the Block 2 ships were ready to sail. Mayweather just wanted a ship to sail, and it really wouldn't matter what hull it was though he was sure that he would be wasted on anything but one of the lithe, quick, powerful ships that constituted the second generation of MCS warships. Hoshi Sato was a hard read; it was tough to say what her dreams and aspirations were, as much as she was excellent at her job and a fine officer, he was pretty certain she didn't bleed MCS and the academies at either Annapolis or San Francisco had to be foaming at the mouth at the idea of getting someone with her level of practical and academic experience on the staff training the next generations of electronic warfare and communications staff.

More than anyone else though, he wondered about Erika; what posting would she receive, what boat would be her new berth. There was no way they were going to stick her in a desk position or behind a lectern; she had too much real experience as a sailor and commander. Erika did bleed MCS but you had to know what you were looking for to see it. She loved the service, loved the 'sea', loved the tradition and history, but she also loved him and that could be their breaking point because he wasn't sure he could stomach being separated from her ever again. It was certain they would have their on-again, off-again regardless of what happened in the future, but now he felt there was an end-game to their relationship that had been going on drawing nigh to twenty years now.

He folded his arms across his chest, leaning back in his chair as he considered it all for a moment; everything that had led up to this point, everything in his history that had made him the man that had been selected to command from what had effectively become the name-sake ship of MCS. It was too much to swallow, too much to consider, it threatened to drown him in the weightiness of it all, so he decided to go back to perusing the classified schematics that he had no official right to have.

It was fascinating how much of the ship was modular; from the mission oriented pods jutting from the pylons over the nacelles to entire sections of the saucer that could be traded in and out for extra storage, labs, marine billeting, refuge housing, or quartering for junior staff and enlisted. Even the nacelles had modular sections and connectors that allowed individual coils, sections, or even the entire nacelle to be removed and replaced in an expedient fashion. External connectors existed, feeding directly to replenishment points throughout the ship, permitting the ship to resupply while underway. On top of all that was a reaction mass fuel storage of 12000 hours at a projected cruising speed of warp 8. According to the estimates it would take 450 days flight time of warp 8 travel before she hit bingo fuel and the fifty day strategic store could be supplemented by taking on additional reaction mass via the Bussard ram scoops mounted on the nacelles.

He was just about to begin reviewing the weapon compliment again when the comm on his desk chirped, snatching his attention. "This is Archer."

"Sir, we have a priority channel from command routed through the Little Whiskey listening post, for your eyes and ears only." Hoshi declared.

"Put it through, miss Sato."

"Aye, sir."

The schematics and technical readouts for the Triumph class ship was immediately replaced with a video feed of Admiral Forrest. "John, this is important, listen up…"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm not supposed to be contacting you about this, nobody else is even supposed to know, but I can't just sit on my hand with this. Do you remember that anomaly you detected about two weeks ago?"

"I think so, Erika had the report sent to Breakwater for forwarding to command, something about an odd signal emanating near the discharge layer of a star or something." Archer had only briefly browsed over the report before signing off.

"We sent Tirpitz to investigate because of a prior strategic concern I'm not going to get into and now she's missing."

Archer shot upright, almost coming out of his chair. "What?"

"We lost contact with Tirpitz a week ago after she arrived in system to investigate. We've heard nothing, no distress signal, no rescue beacons, no report of what they saw or came into contact with…it's like she disappeared from reality and none of our listening posts are getting squat from that system." Forrest's expression was haggard, concerned, even a little angry.

"Orders, sir?"

"There isn't a thing I can tell you to do officially, John…hell we're not even having this conversation, I'm contacting you on the pretense of providing you flag transition procedure information."

"I'll get us underway, we're about four days out at warp 8." Archer declared, primed to eject himself from the chair.

"I don't want to send you into a firefight, not with the condition _Enterprise_ is in John, but…"

"I understand, we'll get to the bottom of this, Max."

"I don't know…" Forrest shook his head, "I hate not having an official recourse here but, if there is something, was something we could do…"

Archer felt a knot forming in his stomach, but he could read the defeat already on Forrest's face and knew at the moment he had to be the strong one. "We have to have faith in Trip, sir, he knows a lot more than we give him credit for. I'll get us underway to that system right now and we'll find Tirpitz and bring her home."

"Be careful, John. Not just for your boat and crew's sake but for your career too, we want those stars to stick, understood?"

"Understood sir, with your permission I'll get us underway."

Forrest nodded, "Carry on, captain. Forrest out."

Archer shot from out of his chair and towards the door exiting his office to the bridge, having to break step just long enough to wait for the door to slide open and let him through. Erika sat upright and called out officer watch.

"Captain on the bridge!"

"As you were," he pre-empted before anyone could move. "Bridge to engineering."

The voice squawked back, "Kelby here."

"Mister Kelby, what is the best speed you can give us sustained."

"Eight point one at one hundred percent sir, but I think I can squeeze out eight point three five." The chief engineer replied.

"Any idea for how long?"

"How long do you need it, sir?"

"As long as you can give it to me, mister Kelby."

There was a pause, Kelby had been jealously cautious with the ship ever since it was revealed the condition it was in. When the news came down that _Enterprise_ was not sound for combat, Kelby had set his engineering and operations teams about the task of surveying every square inch of the ship. The resulting brief had illustrated that while the ship was sound enough for transport, there were several key systems that were at an abnormally high risk for catastrophic failure. One of these systems was the mid-line shield arrays and the strain on the EPS system created by running over-spec in any regard could set off a crippling system failure. "Roger that sir, we'll sustain as long as possible then drop back down to eight one, I'm certain I can promise you at least six hours at eight three five."

Archer looked over to Hernandez with a painfully serious expression, "Very good, mister Kelby, carry on."

"Aye, sir."

Archer crossed to his command couch but didn't sit, instead turning on his heels to face midway between his XO and navigation/pilot officer. "Do we still have the charts for the system you detected the anomaly in at oh god-awful hours a few weeks ago?"

Hernandez looked from the captain to Mayweather, "They should still be in our priority list, one zero four niner five niner one, KC twenty six oh five if I remember correctly."

"Aye, ma'am, I have the chart pulled." Mayweather declared.

"Lay in a course, best possible speed, mister Mayweather." Archer declared.

"Aye, aye, sir."

He turned back to Erika whose own face was beginning to show intense misgivings, she glanced to her left and right before mouthing the words, "What's going on?"

Archer lowered his voice to barely above a whisper as the ship thrummed with the sound for the power-plants forming the sub-space pocket for the jump to warp. "Trip and his boat have gone missing."

Her eyes went wide with alarm at this revelation.

* * *

><p>"We're receiving orders to hold our position."<p>

Colonel Korrus turned to look over to his subordinate, "What?"

"The order came from the aquatics; primate, arboreal, and insectoid ships are all holding positions."

Korrus felt a wave of fury building, they had the numbers it was impossible that they could not defeat these human ships with the numbers this squarely on their side, "Why? Why are they ordering us to hold position, if we attack now we'll have them."

"Sir, the larger of the two ships fired something at Azati prime." The junior reptilian declared.

"We haven't detected any radiological activity; it wasn't biological or chemical was it?" He found the idea a bioweapon alarming but realistically it could not be tailored to effect each species' biology in a meaningful way. The surviving species would just have to step over the bodies of their fallen brethren and press on.

"No, sir. Our sensors detected the presence of a forty five kilogram object fired at the planet into the Lursshis Oceanic Basin." The younger officer replied.

Korrus furrowed the ridges below his brow-plate, "That isn't a very large payload, why the order to hold?"

"Sir, the human ship accelerated the object at four hundred thirty eight thousand meters per second. The impact produced an explosion effect equivalent to sixty seven thousand tons of standard explosives."

Korrus felt a cold knot form in his gizzard, "It was a warning shot, do they have more of these weapons?"

"Our long range scans seem to indicate that it was one of their standard weapon batteries, not a special application device."

Behind and to the right a second junior reptilian officer spoke up, causing Korrus to turn, "Sir, we are receiving communications from the larger human ship, it is being broadcast to all ships in the fleet."

Korrus half shook his head, half nodded, "Put it through, if the humans wish to talk they must be feeling generous."

The screen came to life broadcasting only a pre-set signal, an image of a rounded triangle bordered in smoky grey with human script around a smaller triangle, this one edged in red with a dark blue center containing a pair of indistinguishable symbols and more human text. A voice came over the still image, "To all Xindi craft, standby, message follows from commanding officer U.S.S. Tirpitz."

The name of the ship caused some twinge in his crop and gizzard, it was a word that sounded like death to him, Korrus adjusted in his seat as the image changed to show a human standing in the fore-front a black heavy fronted vest over dark blue uniform with sleeves rolled to above the elbow, behind him he saw two other humans similarly garbed, all three wearing strange billed caps and with stern countenance. In the background he could see dozens of monitors, view screens, and work station manned by similarly garbed humans each adding a black short helmet in the place of the point-cornered head garb the three standing humans wore.

"This is Captain Charles Anthony Tucker of the U.S.S. Tripitz. We currently have targeting solutions for all the major industrial and power generating facilities on the planet below, if you deviate from your current position we will open fire on these locations utilizing the same strike package as used three minutes ago in your second largest oceanic body on planet. We have the capacity to strike all these target locations within ninety seconds of any movement on your part so do not be deceived into thinking you will be able to successfully attack this craft before we have completed a fire mission. "

The being identifying himself as captain Tucker turned his head left slightly and nodded, as he did so two more humans appeared, each was garbed in the same heavy vest but with numerous load carrying pouches and weapons hanging from straps around their necks and shoulders. Their garb was a collection of browns, greens, and tans, clearly meant to act as camouflage, even the vest was a muted tan-brown shade. They similarly wore helmets but with additional devices attached to the sides and a heavy mooring plate in the front probably for some visual augmentation device. Korrus noticed for the first time how thick necked and muscular limbed the humans seemed to be, much different from what he had seen of humans from intelligence reports, in terms of pure physical bulk they looked like they rivaled his fellow reptilians. In front of them was a shorter being with a black cloth bag over his head, they pulled it off once they had centered themselves in front of the camera then stepped out of the way. Korrus nearly leapt from his seat when he recognized who it was, "They captured Degra!"

The primate sputtered into the camera in fear, "Don't attempt action! These humans are insane! They can destroy all life on Azati prime in a heartbeat if we don't do as they ask!"

"What do they ask of us?" a voice that Korrus recognized as Councilor Janar of the arboreals asked.

The human called Tucker stepped back into view of the camera, "Terms for cessation of hostilities."

"Where would these terms be discussed?" Korrus knew this voice to belong to Dolim of his own species.

"Either on my ship or neutral ground where both parties can place targeting solutions of the meeting spot." Tucker replied, "This part, is not open for negotiation. You have thirty minutes to discuss this matter and comply or I will commence with bombardment of strategic targets on Azati prime, in the meantime, any attempt on the part of your ships to move from you current locations will result in bombardment of the same positions and the inevitable destruction of all your ships. Do a quick scan of the system if you don't believe our capacity to neutralize your forces, there are still enough hulks floating around to verify our ability."

Korrus turned back to his sensors officer, "Scan for debris."

"We already did, we detect the remains of now fewer than fourteen ships, mostly reptilian and insectoid with at least two aquatic ships. All are destroyed or otherwise completely crippled."

Korrus felt the heat go out of his blood, "Forward the results to Dolim."

"I already have, sir, in accordance with operating dictum."

Korrus felt his cloaca tighten in time with the churning in his gut. Scans of the larger of the two human ships seemed to indicate she had taken no appreciable damage, but to be able to destroy that many Xindi ships she had to either out-range as well as out-gun them, or she was so well protected that not even the attrition of close engagement could manage to get through her shields and armor. Worse still was the potential that she possessed advanced electronic warfare capability and was simply able to shut down enemy craft to pick apart at her leisure; either option spelled disaster for him and his crew, not to mention any other Xindi ship in the area and the population of Azati prime. He half considered communicating to Dolim, begging a tempered response knowing how hot the reptilian military leader's blood ran. Before he could give the order he heard the grudging growl of the general himself.

"To all ships, remain at your current positions, power down weapons."


	51. Chapter 51

Trip was quietly seething before he even felt time stop. He could pick out the sensation completely now, something specifically about the way his hair moved, the way the clothes hung, the way anything he physically interacted with seemed to fight back against him as it was accelerated with what was, in effect, almost explosive speed relative the time progressing at billionths of its normal rate. Once again he was playing the inadvertent peace maker, which, save for the logistics of fighting a war in a different plane of existence, was exactly the opposite of what he wanted.

Of course everything had almost gone side-ways when the Reptilians tried to sneak a Suicide Bomber onto _Tirpitz_ as part of the delegation. Hospital Corpsman Nansen had detected the binary explosive compounds almost by smell and the MARSOC Marines had reacted instantly, stitching the Xindi with small arms fire then kicking the falling corpse back into the airlock. The remaining Marine detail had immediately drawn on the remaining Xindi dignitaries and physically forced them to the deck, a hair's breadth from immediately evacuating the skull cavity of each with heavy weight CQC projectiles. Trip had extended his left hand calling for checked fire even as his right hand was holding his M51 squarely pointed to the forehead of the Xindi Reptilian Representative.

"It's your call Jon, we do 'em all right here and give the whole place the steal or do we talk?" Archer had opted for diplomacy as he had been certain he would.

In a way it was a blessing because nothing short of genocide was going to finish the job should they opt the other way. He had held most of his ire in check as he explained the entanglement issues, explained how their forces had been supplemented with Xindi from other planes of reality and that this explained the sudden increase in force composition. Explained how they were clearly being manipulated by the "sphere builders" despite the fact that they had no information about spheres at all, didn't know about spatial anomalies, and couldn't explain why they had been ordered to begin marshalling to the system that had contained the space-time tear. As a matter of fact they seemed ignorant of just about everything except for the "protectors" who had helped save them as a whole from some disaster and had vaguely warned about a "threat from beyond". None of it seemed to add up but Trip wasn't ready to tip his hand too much in case whatever it was that was manipulating things decided to single him out to deal with their operations getting disrupted. It had finally taken him going to show them his counter-part from this universe wasting away to illustrate the fact that different realities were at play here.

The experience had been trying in a way he had not wanted to show. To look at what was, effectively, himself lying on the medical bed, skin and bones, pale and jaundiced, smelling slightly of death as tubes and monitors kept the body alive had strained every bit of his reserve. How could you look at your own corpse and not be affected by the codification of your own mortality? How could he look at this shell of a man, a shell of himself, and not feel outraged at allowing the body to be kept alive like this?

The strain of all the events had him experiencing a peculiar sort of numbness when he first heard her speak.

"You did not inquire about the individuals responsible for this course of action." Her Vulcan voice was tense with irritation she was barely masking.

Part of him momentarily wondered if propellant would scale properly or would a bullet travel at normal speeds even within the time fractal bubble rendering the bullet to travel at what was effectively millimeters a minute. Right now he hated her more than anything in the world.

"Were you just not payin' attention or are you just showin' back up for the first time? These people know nothin', the entire continuity arch has been doctored, only things we've got that show there ever were sphere builders here at all are the distortion readin's from the rabbit hole we came down and Archer's scans saved in hard-copy before the revisions occurred. Even he was confused by 'em."

She sighed, folding her hands into the sleeves of her robes. "Then we have failed."

"I hope when you say 'we' you're not includin' me'n the equation."

"You are an active variable, you are aware of the course of events but did not manage to glean any additional information beyond what was already known, I am certainly including you in the equation."

He snorted with obvious disdain, "That'll look good for coverin' yer ass on the report but anyone other'n a Vulcan would see right through that."

"Typical of a human to never accept blame."

"And typical of'a Vulcan to pass it off e'rywhere but where it lies."

She made an audible sound of annoyance, "How can you arrive at that conclusion?"

"Let's recap the intel you gave me, shall we? You told me an extant faction was manipulatin' things in this plane of existence, you couldn't tell me ner'y a thing about who they were or what their motivation was, I arrived at the conclusion they were out for us specifically. You asked me to tell people who had never seen a fox that they had one in their hen-house after they had already been completely convinced it was a hound-dog. Now I've just finished puttin' hun'reds of years of their cultural beliefs in the hot-seat and neutralizin' most of the threat, but if you think I'm gpnna sit here and do an investigation for a few months till we get everythin' figured out, you've gotta 'nother thing comin'." He leveled a finger in her direction as he spoke the indictment. "I'm pretty sure there is already a panic goin' on at home 'bout the fact we all but disappeared from reality, so now that the threat has been neutralized my _only_ concern is getting' my boat and my men home."

She couldn't counter the point, and it was infuriating, everything he said was true, her own colleagues had no idea what was going on and they specialized in this field. Some seed of anger in her caught onto the tinder of her emotions and the fire flared, "Why? What is so important? This is war, is it not? Isn't that all you humans are good for?"

"Maybe…but my wife's time is comin' and I'm not going to leave her to face it alone."

"What?"

"T'Pol, my wife…her fever is approachin' and I have to help her through it."

She felt a wave of revulsion and guilt wash over her, "Why? She would be better served by a Vulcan, the sooner you can accept that the sooner she can be released from the farce and before you can-"

He cut her off, "Have children? Its already too late for that."

She went silent. What else could she say?

"So how many generations removed is it?" He asked.

"Is what removed?"

"The human blood, that's what it is, isn't it? There's human blood in you and you hate it, don't you?" He couldn't see her occluded in shadows as she somehow always managed to be, but he could see the light reflecting in her eyes staring right back at him. There was a burning intensity there; one part fear, one part indignity, a sprinkle of disdain and just a dusting of curiosity. It provided another clue for him, "And not just any human blood, it was mine, wa'n't it? Either me or one'uv my counterparts from 'nother reality."

Abruptly time shifted and returned to normal as she instantly vanished from before him, voices and sounds and movements beginning again all around as Archer continued to drone on, going over the findings he had locked away before the retro-active time-wipe that had carelessly forgotten to check for the physical presence of PADD 0013581 spirited away in a ceiling panel. The Xindi all seemed to show reactions ranging from horror to outrage. Everything was so hard to debate when everything was so concisely presented and be it fear or exhaustion the Xindi were willing to accept what was, for all intents and purposes, a pretty out-there premise. Unsurprisingly the Reptilian councilor came out of his chair, slamming a fist on the table in front of him as he looked again at the definitive proof taken by Xindi scanners that showed that wreckage from two ships _Tirpitz_ had destroyed were, basically, the same ship down to bolts uses, registry number of parts, and the atoms that made them up.

"We have been manipulated with lies for hundreds of years now. We have been used as tools against our own will." The being growled to his fellow dignitaries.

"But we can't argue that they saved us from the cataclysm that would have killed us all!" One of the primates insisted.

"Did they? Or was this just more manipulation on their part?" One of the two Arboreals posited.

One of the insectoids began chattering in its squeaky wheezing clicking language, prompting the Arboreals and the Primate to nod.

"Yes, it is true that events transpired in a way that conveniently eliminated the dissenting voice of the Avians." The Arboreal confirmed prompting the communicator link to the Aquatics to begin emitting their whale-song language.

"Even if there were some natural disaster there would have likely been a large enough stock of breedable Avians remaining to keep their species alive while science developed techniques to provide them with more genetic variations." The Reptilian spat angrily, "but by forcing them to choose between their view that we were being lead astray by the _others_, they made sure that the entire Avian population was suitably cloistered to be destroyed. And if what these readings say about the star in sector fifteen twenty one are true, then they could have eliminated the Avians with ease to reinforce the perception that they were gods."

Archer stood, "We do not want war with your people, we don't want conflict, we just want to be able to live our lives and come to understand the universe better. Do you think we, as two peoples, can end the bloodshed here?"

The Reptilian looked at Archer, his gaze still intense, "There will be more bloodshed, human, but not between our peoples, we have both been wronged by the influence of outsiders and I will not support further military action against your people."

It was Trip's turn to speak up now, and he did so trying to avoid eye contact with any of the gathered delegates, "What 'bout the disposition of the craft supplementin' your forces not indigenous to this space-time frame?"

An Arboreal spoke up, "We have detected spatial anomalies similar to the one you came through at various places in our territory, based on the navigational tracks of the ships that have been identified as not from this reality plane they should be able to retrace their steps to the anomalies they initially encountered."

"Is there any idea on what it would take to close them?" One of the primates asked, likely concerned not so much about the potential of bolstering their own forces as to the idea that a ship like _Tirpitz_ might find its way back through.

"We've been unable to reach any conclusions 'bout how to go 'bout doin' that." Tucker replied, voice still even as he stifled some unresolved anger he couldn't quite put a finger on.

"There are other matters which must be discussed," The lead Reptilian boomed, "A treaty, non-aggression pacts, things in place to ensure this never happens again, and we must determine reparations to be made to the humans, even with the balance of Xindi lives lost we are still close to seven million in the margin versus what we did to the humans."

Part of Trip wondered if they'd been this reasonable with _his _Archer, if they had truly seen the error of their ways or if they just became very contrite when backed into a corner. Still, something about a "people" that consisted of five individual races who shared an identity bespoke, at the very least, a culture and ethos that saw beyond the skin, and if that were true perhaps they were rational. He forced himself to wonder what humanity would have done if the Book of Revelations or someone like Edgar Casey or Nostradamus had specifically predicted the Klingons or Romulans and called for their elimination. People could get remarkably positively disposed towards genocide when there was prophecy involved.

None of that mattered right now, though. He needed to get things squared away so they could get back to their own reality, hoping beyond hope that the reality schema changes took a long time to enact and plan so, at the very least, they could get to and figure out a way through the anomaly before anything changed. Of course, whoever was responsible for this would be taking too big a risk by tipping their hand and trapping _Tirpitz_ here, in this plain. No, if they wanted to negate all of this their best bet would be to roll everything back to before _Enterprise_ had detected the disturbance in the first place and _Tirptiz_ would have never gotten sortied prematurely. The risk just struck him, what they had done to Archer in this universe had been a perfect case-in-point. The spatial anomalies, the spheres, they had removed them all because they no longer served a purpose for their plans, could they do the same thing with the failed staging-area plot? Get everyone out of this reality schema then wipe the slate so that nobody remembered any of it? He had to make sure it was documented, and soon, before the impact to could be felt in their time-line where-ever or when-ever it was.

* * *

><p>The pack-leader's elder rose early, before the sun had come out and quietly made his way through the pack-leader and den-mother's lair and outside. The opening which counter-intuitively, also closed, was left wide so that he could follow and he did so. He could smell the same blood and scents of the Pack-leader in the elder, which must mean he was sire to the pack-leader and barring that relationship, he had found this being to be agreeably disposed to him in the past. The strange hides that they arrayed themselves in and changed often was of tones that spoke of the grass and bushes and trees he had grown accustomed to and from the being he sensed a directed and tamped down aggression. He knew it was the hunter's focus and it caused the fur on his neck to rise.<p>

The elder pack-leader looked down at him and began making the noises his kind made, rhythmic and stuttering with a medley of chirps, growls, clicks, and hisses. He knew the elder was directing the sounds to him so he chuffed a reply, affirming what he felt to be an inquiry. So the elder crossed to the little caves they traveled around in, smelling of chemicals and other unnatural things and opened the rear most opening that also closed and contained a substance that was hard like stone but he could see through, like those that existed in the lair. He knew the elder did not intend to enter this opening since he never had in the past, but as the cave would convey them over distances at great speed, others would occupy this zone. So he climbed inside, settling onto the shelf that felt like the shelves the pack would occupy during their waking time to lounge. The opening closed with a thump and he watched with a slight moment of panic of being trapped as the elder-pack-leader made his way around the cave to the opposite side and applied himself to the other closed opening, allowing himself in.

The elder chirped again and he realized that the being was letting him know they would be using the little-cave to convey them elsewhere, so trusting the elder knew what was to be done he set himself about licking his paws and preening while the cave rumbled and thrummed, and began moving over ground. As they traveled other little-caves passed and were passed by as they traveled on the great hard flats that ran great distances over water and marsh and land.

At some point, watching the land and other little-caves, some larger than others, some faster than others, had tired him and he lowered his head and slept, feeling a strange relaxation as the subtle jerk and thumps of the little-cave and the sounds like those made by the beings like the pack-master and den-mother that seemed to emanate from the little-cave itself. He wasn't aware how much time had passed as he dozed on and off again until he felt a series of shifts as the balance of the little-cave altered drastically, the velocity slowing until it had stopped and the thrumming, and chirping stopped altogether. The clunk of the opening coming open then closing roused him and when he turned to look through the water-stone that he could not penetrate but allowed him to see the elder was there plying the opening to allow him out of the little-cave.

He exited the little-cave and saw several other beings like the elder, and they made sounds like prey made upon seeing him, setting others to braying in a way he knew was amusement. The elder spoke back and they turned to look away in the distance, setting him to follow suit with the bipeds and he noticed fields of tall grass and bushes and trees, and on the morning breeze, heavy with the scent of dew and foliage he could smell something he could not explain but knew somehow it was prey. He bristled at the desire to charge out into the fields but knew he could not do so without the elder's deference, so he remained, sitting on his hind haunches waiting for the cord that would bind him to the elder's will, but none came. He looked at the other little-caves, some still warm, some much larger than that which they had come in, and counted eight bipeds like the Elder with them. One approached and extended his forepaw, the back up to his nose inviting him to sniff. He did so, and from the odor realized this was a hot blood like the elder and pack-leader, or rather, unlike the den-mother and cub. He sniffed long, then gave it a long lick, and when the paw did not retract he rammed his face into it to mark it as his, rubbing his cheek into it and feeling the individual flexible toes kneading into his cheek and behind his ear just like he enjoyed and he chuffed in contentment.

The biped made a clucking sound and lowered himself to be on level with his muzzle and continued to knead his long-toes into the cheeks, neck, and behind the ears which he took to be a sign that the biped was fond of him which, in turn, made him fond of this particular biped.

The biped turned to the elder and clucked away, prompting the elder to reply with a sound he had heard many times before that started as a growl and ended with a click.

Suddenly the other bipeds began making sounds of surprise and all turned their head towards the woods, forcing him to follow suit when he saw them; tall quadrupeds, lean in their limbs and long in body with small heads and one topped with branching horns. The bipeds made low quiet sounds and pointed at them in the distance with their fore-limbs and the hair on his neck bristled as he dropped instinctively low to begin the stalk. The elder dropped to a knee before him, looking him in the eye with a strong forelimb around his furry neck and pointed with the other forelimb. The elder made a series of clicking sounds and hisses that he understood as a single command. He did not understand the language of the elder but he understood the meaning in it.

_Go, kill, feed._

* * *

><p>It was mid-afternoon when Charles Jr. and the Sehlat returned to the bungalow. T'Les had no idea where they were or what they had been doing beyond Elaine's cryptic statement that the elder Tucker was off to "make a man" of the sehlat. From her limited understanding of human customs she assumed this had meant alcohol and under-dressed females but dismissed this as a matter of course as she could not imagine the sehlat imbibing any more than she could imagine his appreciation of the fully or partially unclothed female humanoid form.<p>

When the ground car had returned the sehlat was yowling and chuffing in time with Charles Jr.'s own singing through the driver-side front window, which had been lowered, he projected his matted snout and jaw, a fresh scratch on the bridge of his nose and a playful set to his disposition. When the vehicle stopped and Charles opened the door the creature immediately bounded out of the front-passenger seat and to the nearest palm, leaping with spread limbs at the trunk and quickly but awkwardly scrambling part way up the trunk before planting his hind quarters on the pithy base and kicking off to land on the ground and trot over to the trunk area of the ground-vehicle.

Charles was laughing the whole time as he opened the rear cargo area and produced three huge parcels of brown over white paper, the ends soaked read in blood. "The conquering hero returns!"

T'Les cocked a brow from the front porch, "What manner of activity constitutes making a 'man' out of a sehlat?"

Elaine appeared beside her, "He get one, Charlie?"

The Tucker patriarch let out a crowing laugh, "He sure as hell did! Got the head off bein' processed for the mount too."

T'les wrinkled her brow, "You took him hunting?"

"Yep, we sure did, and our fellah here took a two hun'erd eighteen pound buck." Charles declared as he cradled two of the packages under his left arm and threw a massive third over his right shoulder.

"Good lord!" Elaine exclaimed.

"Twelve points on 'im too, Bob had been tryin' to take that buck for the better part of five seasons and Teeth here picked him right out of the heard and brought 'im down!"

The sehlat chuffed in a way that made him seem clearly satisfied with his accomplishment. The fresh scratch on the bridge of his nose showing that the confrontation had been at least somewhat lively and he had been forced to fight for the kill. T'Les approached and knelt down, examining the scratch and his elongated canines for damage. "How was he injured?"

Tucker shrugged with a bit of sheepishness, "That? It's just a scratch, the buck tried to kick at him and skimmed his nose before he could latch on. He put his teeth right through the throat then rolled 'im right over, snapped his neck clean and let 'im bleed out."

"Shocking." T'Les replied, it was all she could say, one did not think of the domestic sehlat as a predator.

"He's a good hunter, has the instinct. Buck didn't suffer a bit, just groaned once, feel asleep and died from blood loss." Charles looked down at the smilidon appraisingly, "not a lot of humans that can even make that claim."

Elaine nodded at the packages, "Where's the rest of it?"

Charles lifted the packages slightly, "These're for Teeth, the rest is getting dressed and processed by Carlyle Stokes, but this is the hunter's prize, two butts and the better rack'a ribs. I'm gonna cook 'em up real nice for 'im."

T'Les arched and inquisitive brow, "He did not attempt to feed at the time?"

Charles grinned, prompting another chuff from the saber-tooth, "Nah, he was too proud'a what he'd done, soon as it went still he just sat back on his haunches like he waited us all to come'n observe the prize. We gave 'im the heart'n tongue though; only fitting given it's his first kill."

T'Les gave a wryly disapproving look, "Would it not be troublesome if he makes a habit of hunting?"

Charles furrowed his brow, "I don't think so, he wasn't defensive of his kill, didn't seem to associate the act of the hunt with the need to feed. He immediately picked up on the idea this was a prey animal. Didn't pay mind to any dog's over at Stokes', acted the same around people. Besides, I think the fact Trip wrestles with him pretty much put in his mind that people are stronger than him, so in his mind we're top of the food chain and not prey animals."

The sehlat chuffed almost as confirmation then rolled onto his back, snaking this body back and forth into the grass. Almost as if on cue, Solan came tearing off the porch and down the steps towards the sehlat, diving at the creature's exposed belly and grabbing ahold. The sabertooth yowled at him and craned its head forward, sniffing at the mop of hair and began dutifully licking away at the errant tresses.

"Yo'r breaf smells like meat." The child scolded with a protesting tone.

The sehlat fixed the child with a gaze T'Les could only see as indignity as she, almost instinctively, tensed to snatch the child away. The smilidon just chuffed again, the sharp exhale through the nose blowing his fair hair and immediately began licking it back into place. The creature continued for a moment then abruptly rolled and hopped to a standing position, dropping the young demi-Vulcan in the grass before reaching up with a giant paw to pull at Charles' arm containing the butts and switched back to nudging Solan with his muzzle.

T'Les was curious by this behavior, never having seen it performed by and adult sehlat with a child, "What is he doing?"

Charles chuckled, "He wants Solan to eat, figures he brought game back for the cub so he can grow up big and strong."

Elaine smiled, "That's precious!"

T'Les was not entirely sure what about that behavior could be remotely construed as endearing, but these were humans…

* * *

><p>Greg Black sat looking at the report, reduced into a cross-word puzzle layout of redactions that were even above his level of clearance. SID seemed to have gutted the report with an almost sadistic gusto, rendering forty eight pages of text and seventy six appendices into six pages of contiguous text and twenty seven only partially redacted diagrams or charts. The only fact he was likely getting to see it at all was that it was coming from one of <em>his<em> Captains and even that was up for debate since his orders for _Tirpitz_ to put back in were overruled by the Joint Services Strategic Command Group who was flexing a muscle for the first time since the Xindi.

He was pissed, and he hadn't cared who he let know it. He called in every favor from everyone he knew to get a line to JSSCG to _demand_ they let him know what had happened and had actually gotten through to General Tyner, the improbable and unapproachable chairman who cast a pall over anything and everything he came into contact with; the Blacker-than-Black Ops overlord who has personally detailed Naval Special Warfare and Special Intelligence Directorate section 31 gunmen during the 47 War. He was often referred Bill Kim's evil twin given they both came up in many of the same conflicts save for the fact that Kim ended up as the primetime human interest piece and Tyner was the one whose name came up every time there was some inquiry into a classified action. Black had almost been ready to hang up the phone out of pure terror when he had been connected to the man's office but had been more surprised with the General gave off an air of affability. During the call he had been insistant that these matters were classified beyond top secret but had seemed contrite about pushing him out of the loop with one of his boats. When Black had finally worked up the nerve and felt comfortable enough with the repartee to ask what was going on, Tyner just sighed and said "Greg, you really don't want to know…I'm looking at it right now and wish _I_ didn't know."

That had struck a chord of nigh-religious terror in Black who suddenly found himself presented with the idea of a truth too horrible to reveal. Topping it off was the sudden influx of a glut of retro-active Security Clearance forms for _Tirpitz's_ crew; everyone who staffed bridge crew, every Marine, and just about everyone else rated above E-3. Fifteen had immediate reassignment orders cut, putting them in nice but heavily cloistered dirt-side postings to serve out a career at intermediate pay-grade or at top-secret country-club facilities to complete the last few years to retirement. Nothing else was said about the senior staff except for the insistence from Gardner and Forrest that Nasir Al-Sistani get his own boat as soon as possible, and preferably an _Iowa_. To this extent the time table for the Phase II boats was moved up two years and there was a formality-only meeting confirming his eventual command of the _U.S.S. Indianapolis _once she was completed. He still couldn't figure out why, though. Nobody was dead or missing, there was some nominal expenditure of ordnance if the pre-emptive requisition forms were an indicator but no reported damage and all the gun camera footage and sensor readings seemed to have been sequestered. If there was a war going on then, goddammit, it was his job to know.

Even more worrisome was the above-board revelation by General Lester that a MARSOC fire-team had been detailed to keep an eye on Tucker's bungalow on Satellite Beach, and they had, apparently, wandered into a SID 31 detail that was doing the same thing. Lester could say little more beyond revealing it _was_ for their security the observation was occurring.

"God, what did Tucker get himself in to?" He mumbled to himself, "What did _I_ get him in to?"

More damage for an already damaged man? Or was this the in-for-life type scenario that would serve to turn him into the next staff level admiral? Either way he sort of hoped, almost prayed, that he wouldn't be hated because of it. He genuinely liked Tucker, he didn't really know him much beyond reputation. Even during the construction and development of the _Iowa_ class they probably never met more than a dozen times and even then it was all business. But he seemed like a well squared away human being who was well grounded in all the ways a person should be. If _Enterprise_ hadn't been so ridiculously broke-dick after all she had been put through it would have been Archer tasked with figuring out what was going on with that anomaly. But then again, it might have also been the case the ship would still be missing. In terms of raw capacity there weren't a whole lot of problems that _Tirpitz_ could get herself in to that she couldn't get out of. This was just one more reason they need more boats out there with a performance profile on par with the _Iowas_ and hopefully _Triumph_ would make a good enough showing to justify them building up their fleet strength where he wanted it to be.

As it was now, _Tirpitz_ was camped outside the anomaly they had been sent to investigate with the _Clifton Sprague_ in route along with the _Pittsburg_, _Ulan Baatar_, _Krakow_, _Chancelorsville_, and the science frigates _Roscoe Brady_ and _Bruce Alberts_ on the way to rendezvous with the ad-hoc task group that would later include the _Ray Davis_ and _Glynn Donaho_. The _Tirpitz_ would then pull back one hundred thirty light years to meet with the replenishment ship _Modesto Catragena_. By that time he assumed Tucker would have worked the Pon-Farr out of T'Pol's system and she could hitch on the _Cartagena_ until it met up with the _Indignation_ for the hop back to Earth. He would then try to pick her brain to discover any additional information about what had gone on because even Section 31 seemed in the dark here which was a troublesome development in his mind.

* * *

><p>V'Kara watched patiently as Mr. Shelby tried once again to avail himself of the PADD to facilitate communication. It was as she suspected, he could still understand language as it was presented or spoken to him but he seemed to lack the ability to order his own thoughts into language either spoken or written. He used the PADD in an attempt to order his thoughts, explain his requests but the end result was always gibberish, a pell-mell splattering of words without anything approaching rational grammatical structure. His latest effort had yielded; "purple to heuristic definitive also thus." The frustration painted on his face as he looked at the words was palpable. He was locked inside his own brain without an understanding of what constituted a key.<p>

He tightened the grip on the PADD and looked as though he was considering throwing the device but held himself in check. She had to admit that she respected his restraint in this situation. She had sat with Vulcan who had suffered traumatic brain injury in the past and in all but a small hand-full of situation their even most rudimentary instinct for restraint were long gone. It had to be galling for an intelligent man to suddenly find himself divested of one of the most rudimentary methods for interaction he had previously possessed. T'Pau's noticeable absence of late was just compounding it. V'Kara wasn't particularly surprised by it, the young woman's obvious attraction to the former-Colonel would force her to stay away as she either resolved the emotions or sought to deprive herself of them through absence, this was not, however, fair on the Colonel who was now deprived of meaningful contact and trapped on a world where he was the alien. She had toyed with the idea of contacting MCS's Department of Veteran Affairs to see about getting the Colonel moved to Earth or, at the very least, a facility where he could receive regular human contact which, in the absence of meaningful interaction with T'Pau, would be better for his mental state than this semi-cloistered isolation.

She had almost brooked the idea with her own mate of moving Shelby into a suite behind their family home. There, at least, he would have contact with other sentient beings besides herself which would provide him with more environmental enrichment than he was currently receiving. As it was now, short of exercise and his meals, he lacked much in the way of mental diversion. He had gone as far as to construct ad-hoc simulacrum of the weapons systems he had used in MCS so he would have something to occupy himself with via the actions of disassembly, cleaning, and reassembly. Having been given access to his finances to provide for sustenance and other items his might need or desire, she had entertained the idea of purchasing one of the civilian models of the weapons he used so that he would actually have an actual example of the devices to work on. The lack of available ammunition for the weapons would remove any potential for self-harm but the familiarity and subtle comfort of performing actions he was accustomed too could serve to help stimulate his mental processes and, perhaps, recovery. Still, she was certain the legal ramifications would prevent the course of action.

He dropped the PADD on the counter and went over to the divan dropping onto it and leaned forward, resting his head in his hands, elbows on his knees and let out a frustrated huffing sob of a sound. This man, this warrior, had been trapped by a weapon meant to be used against her people. If it had not been for the threat MAC-V posed, he, specifically, had posed to the Romulan invaders, the very piece of ordnance that had crippled his mind might have killed up to dozens of Vulcans. Death might have been a mercy in this situation, but even that had eluded him. It was time to do something about this, time to give him an outlet to the slowly simmering rage and frustration that seemed to be the result of some secret shame on the part of Minister T'Pau.

V'Kara had learned early on that the Colonel responded just as readily to her native language as he did to his own and had abandoned the practice of speaking Terran Standard English in his presence months ago. He would grunt or nod or shake his head to acknowledge being addressed, but for quite some time now not a single word of English had left her mouth. So as she pulled up the Planetary Information Network code for the Terran Embassy in Shi'kahr and connected with their call center, he lifted his head and looked in her direction when she spoke in his native tongue. "Is this the Terran Embassy? Yes, I would like to speak with someone regarding the disposition of Colonel Wayne Shelby."

He lifted his head, standing from where he was seated at the divan and looked over to where she was in front of the domestic communication device.

The voice on the other end was even, devoid of affect, and hinting at the vestiges of an accent. It took a second for V'Kara to place it, but within moments she realized her pronunciation quirks were the result of a Golic speaker abruptly shifting to Terran English without an extended period of time engaged in conversational English to grasp its nuance.

"Yes, I am his care-taker. The Colonel is ambulatory and seems to be possessed of his mental faculties and I believe it would behoove him to be assessed by a human health care professional. It is my belief that the Colonel is currently in need of contact with other humans and begin a regimen of professionally guided rehabilitation therapy."

At the other end of the line the Vulcan female receptionist began a series of questions, "The current disposition of Wayne Shelby is listed as in the care of Minister T'Pau of the high command; do you contest this assertion?"

V'Kara cocked her brows reflexively, "The Minister is currently engaged in the financial upkeep of the Colonel, and acts under power of attorney regarding his financial concerns but it is my belief as a licensed care-giver that the Colonel's mental well-being has been neglected. If nothing further, I am of the professional opinion that his current condition should be assessed by a human health-services professional to determine and chart the progress of his recovery from his injuries."

"Could we inquire as to your name?"

"V'Kara, daughter of Suren, my professional recovery care-giver license number is six five five one nine four eight zero zero one eight."

Part of her felt a strange twinge of guilt, as if she was abandoning the Colonel by trying to get others involved in his recovery, but the facts were that he needed outside support beyond what she could give and with T'Pau's absence, any level of attention would be an improvement. At least part of her was certain that given the human quality they called "Esprit de corps" he would be able to find meaningful contact among his own, some of whom doubtlessly wondered about the status of their former colleague and commander. The potential existed that this course of action was an overreach on her part and would result in her summary dismissal by the Minister, but at the moment, she realized the well-being of her charge far outweighed the Minister's sense of privacy. If she truly cared for the Colonel, as V'Kara suspected, she would embrace the necessity of this course of action and if she just wanted to keep him out of some unrequited fancy she occasionally entertained, it was better for the human to be free of it.


	52. Chapter 52

Whoever had managed to surreptitiously sneak the qualifying range into the ship was a certifiable damn genius. In each of the two dorsal projecting hull protrusions that ran the length of the ship they had spirited away a three lane, 300 yard long rifle range and in each of the two dorsal projections were a pair of eight lane 100 yard long pistol and CQB ranges. It still presented a fierce few days of handling requals for all personnel authorized to use weapons in the associated categories but from what he heard, on other ships they had to shut down a nacelle and use doped loads to simulate the correct standards for requalification. As it was, they got to use standard power loads and could stand folks three across at each of the two dorsal ranges and could handle eighteen at a time at the ventral. The way he heard it, it took the one company of MARSOC on Enterprise a whole week to complete requalification between being underway and having to drop out of warp and purge the nacelle that would be used. It had taken _Tirpitz_ the same amount of time to requal the entire battalion plus the FMF detail and they had done it underway. As it was there were six naval personnel that were set to requalify with Marine issue small arms and today he was handling the last one; Captain Tucker himself.

Lieutenant Pritchard had noted, immediately, his demeanor; he was surly, irritated, his skin flushed and he hadn't shaved. He would have assumed that it was just a case of nerves or lack of sleep, were it not for the fact that all his movements had the normal level of fluidity and he barely growled a greeting when he had arrived. He had signed in quickly, snatched the sidearm from where it was resting on the fire-line counter and had with great speed dumped the contents of the magazine into the qualifying targets. He quickly completed the customary magazine change, reacquired, then dropped mag and cleared the weapon to complete the task, not even bothering to issue the traditional "weapon clear" call. He went to the next lane without a word, grabbing the enhanced battle rifle and sighted in on the target at the far end of the lane, quickly printing a messy group on target that kept him qualified but wasn't going to do anything for an accuracy record, but, Pritchard reflected, the speed with which he had emptied the magazine into the target was certainly respectable and would certainly function in a combat situation. He once again cleared the weapon, snatching the magazine from its well and locked the bolt back before dropping it on the counter and heading to the station with the DMR.

He brought the designated marksman rifle to his shoulder and quickly acquired the note-card sized target at the far end of the firing lane. He caught his breath and fired, shifted, fired, shifted again and fired, repeating the process until he'd dotted all four corners then one round dead center. Fast and accurate, actually bettering his score from his previous requalification despite having dropped down slightly on the EBR and having held just about steady from his previous pistol score which was still listed as the high-water mark for combat pistol qualification. When he returned to the first lane and picked up the assault rifle his expression was almost livid. He snatched back the charging handle violently and shouldered the weapon, snapping off the safety as he began to work the targets on semi with quick three shot groups. He had emptied the whole thirty from the magazine in just under six seconds and dropped the magazine, this time on the deck while he locked the bolt carrier back, muttering to himself in something unintelligible as he did so. He bent down to pick up the magazine, hitting his head on the counter and swore, placing the ammunition container next to the weapon and looked over to Pritchard.

"K'fai nash'veh?"

Pritchard looked over to Corporal Dunn then back to the Captain, "Excuse me, sir?"

"Am I finished here?"

Pritchard, who was rarely at a loss for word or confused as to what reaction was appropriate in a situation just blinked at the captain. "Uhhh, yes…sir, you've completed your requalification, we'll input the information and upload in a few hours."

"Alright then." He turned to leave, opening the hatch and once again began mumbling to himself. "Hayal nazh, dvun-tor sahris etek tor-yehet."

* * *

><p>T'Pol paced the small room, movement doing something to divert her attention from the burning that seemed to bite and tear at every inch of her body, every breath seeming to scream at her, her fingernails itched, her hair ached, her eyes felt like needles. She looked back into the small privy area at the pile of towels discarded there as she considered availing herself of the shower again, alternating between cold and hot water as she tried anything that she could use to sooth herself. The hot water at first soothing the tension in her body but then requiring a quick shift to cold as her blood roared at the increased heat. She had taken six showers today, and she found that each time the relief it provided lasted less and less time. The final shower had only given her a few moments respite before the symptoms became pronounced again, and she had fought with the temperature up and down, trying various iterations of heat and cold to try to achieve some measure of relief before giving up and climbing out again. Trying to towel herself off with already wet towels she realized how sensitive her body was becoming. She was close enough now to feel his mind, feel his thoughts but still hours away at maximum speed, both ships hurtling towards each other at the limits of their safe operating capacity.<p>

She could feel a strange swirling madness rising from her like steam, felt it sucked up and away as if by a metaphysical air exchange system and as she had checked her temperature to register 37.9 Celsius she knew it had to be Trip taking it unto himself or her transferring it to him by force. The fact he was so close had added another negative side-effect as she tried to towel off, her sensations transferring to him, turning into sexual stimuli and begin sent back which had resulted in her falling in a heap of hyper-stimulation as she tried to towel off after the last shower; a moment of almost painfully over-stimulated bliss that immediately gave way to stratospherically elevated frustration almost as quickly. In spite of her discomfort, the pain, the heat, she felt this churning need; not for touch, not for caress, just to have herself slammed against anything that would provide significant purchase, her pants torn down and have herself plied by anything that would provide a suitable simulacrum for a penis. She stuck the edge of her hand in her mouth to keep from screaming at it all, instead only producing a horse sounding grunt but it was clearly loud enough as the door to the quarters slid open and the female FMF stuck her hat-covered head into the room for a moment before the door closed again.

_Six hours, six hours, six hours…why aren't you closer?_

His mind growled back at hers, _Calm down, we're moving as fast as we can._

_Six hours is too long!_

She felt the dark wave of anger from him, but it broke before it could roll over her, _We're doing our best, I know you can hold out just a little longer, you'll be here soon._

Mentally she hissed back a retort,_ No, I can't, I need it now!_

She felt the chuckle in his thoughts, a rueful, bitter kind of humor. _I bet there're 'bout a dozen sailors on that boat that'll drop pants and give you one in a second's notice if you play the cards right._

_Maybe I should!_ She fired back.

_Yeah…maybe you should_. The humor was gone, replaced by something she couldn't place now, something that was angry and hurt but inscrutably so; it felt betrayed and confused and full of self-doubt, echoing words of "be free of this farce". The accusation, the incrimination was directed inwards to him, not outwards towards her, the edge of the words cutting him, bleeding him, they were intended to wound his heart, his soul, and now he wondered if they had not been correct.

This was her fault…she had forgotten it, but she was responsible. She had convinced him to stay as an active fleet captain. If she hadn't allowed herself to insist, to manipulate him, they'd be together right now, intertwined, inside…inside…

She let the want bleed through, not just for a body, a male…any male. She wanted her _mate_, she wanted to feel his mind inside her as much as his body, to touch the scars, to grab ahold of the places she did when he took her teetering over the edge; his hair to grab ahold of, his shoulder to bite, his sides and ribs to wrap her legs around, his arms to fall into. His lips, his eyes, his skin, his nose, his chuckle, his teasing and caressing and fondling…that thing he did with his tongue…

_Trip._

_I'm here, darlin'._

_I won't._

_Glad to hear it._

_Tell me you love me._

She almost heard him sigh, _Is there anything about what I've been doin' that would make you think otherwise._

_Tell me._

_I love you._

_Say it like you mean it._

_Baby, you're the light of my life, only one thing in the world I love more'n you and that's out lil boy,_ he paused_, but right now, as much as I love you, you're bein' a real pain in the ass. But I still love you._

The process of thinking to him, communicating, reaching out to him was strangely diverting, it was like her body ceased to exist for a moment and she existed only as her thoughts plagued ever so slightly by a sort of fidgeting, sticky warmth that made focusing complicated, but hardly impossible.

_Tell me you want me._

_Define 'want'._

She felt herself frown physically, _How do you think?_

_Want you to hush so I can get everyhin' I need to get done, done 'fore you get me cooped up b'tween the sheets for'a week?_

_Tell me what you'll do to me._

She felt him physically stop moving, he had been going somewhere with purpose, drive, but he was stopped now, his mental process seeming to clumsily stumble forward and trip over its own metaphysical feet. _Whoa, just a second…you want me to talk dirty to you? Mental phone sex?_

_Keep me distracted you fucker!_ She had never used the word before; she had heard it many times but had never uttered it or even thought to use it beyond an analysis of its application in any given situation. But right now…

_Jeeeeezzzzuuss, are you gonna talk to me like that when you're here?_

She felt an explosion of sensation from him, a twisting in his gut, light and heavy at the same time, heat on heat that caused the bottom of her feet to itch and the rush to his groin. She squeezed her thighs together, mentally oblivious to the sudden surge in her pelvis but somehow knowing what it all meant.

_You're an engineer, crank up your fucking engines and get here faster! _She yelled at his mind, _I need you to use that thing for what it's meant for!_

_We're already usin' it for what its meant for._

_Not the ship's engines…yours!_

The tone of his mind took on an inscrutable edge, almost teasing, almost breathless, _Oh yeah, what is it meant for?_

_To be put inside me!_ She screeched back. _That is the only reason you have it, the only reason it exists is so you can put it in me! Everything else was just practice for me! I am your end-game Charles Anthony Tucker, you have a penis because I want it!_

His mind began immediately warring with itself, dozens of iterations of his voice all talking at once. Some bellowing like a Drill Instructor, some reciting information or figures like some religious litany, and above them all one that seemed to shout in utter social despair, _I can't walk into the CIC like this!_

* * *

><p>Trip stormed into the CIC eyes wide, hair standing on end running from the top of his scalp down his neck to his arms and legs. Somehow, through some weird magic and likely the burning of the balance of willpower he would have for the rest of his life he forced his erection into some manageable level of flaccidity. He wasn't sure if he liked or hated this side of T'Pol because it had completely ruined every vestige of self-control he had.<p>

"Get me engineerin'." He barked.

"Bridge to engineering, come back." Some kid whose name Trip could not for the life of him even begin to remember spoke.

"Engineering, send traffic."

"Get me warp nine!" Tucker declared.

"Sir?"

_Don't argue you sonuvabitch, just do it._

"Warp nine, how copy?"

"Sir," Lieutenant Commander Gibberti sputtered, "We haven't even broken eight point seven, the engines are only rated for eight one."

"And we pull eight six, don't we?" What he wouldn't give to have Kelby down there right now. Kelby would have been too busy wiping away errant strands of drool from the very thought of warp 9 to manage to question the order.

"We're going to be going point nine warp over the rating on the engines, sir, that's dangerous territory, I don't think I need to advise you."

Tucker felt a flush of heat in his face, compounded by the not-so-subtle, subtle needling from T'Pol's mind as she seemed to mentally writhe in the most suggestive way imaginable. "When _I_ built those engines, I had warp nine in mind, Lieutenant Commander, now I'm issuin' an order to push for warp nine."

"I cannot begin to recommend enough you do not attempt this, sir." Gibberti groused back.

"Am I correct to assume you are refusing an order, mister Gibberti?" He inquired in an even tone.

The chain of command trump played, the Engineering chief faltered. There was nothing left to do now but to refuse the order and be relieved or do as he was bid. The only other possible course of action was to attempt to relieve the captain, but that would be an up-hill battle and not something he could do without following the correct course of action. You couldn't just say "I'm relieving you of command pursuant to…whatever" and expect it to stick. There was a methodology to be followed, and if he were to be honest with himself he knew so little about the vagaries of command that he wouldn't even know which general order or law or rule would need to be invoked. Tucker had won, and Gibberti found himself hopeless in the face of it.

"I am doing this under protest, sir."

"Noted, walk us up from eight point two, if we start to scram out around eight seven, take us back down." Tucker conceded with a sort of even toned magnanimity.

Nassir approached from his left, his face even but his eyes hinting at his concern. He stepped close before he spoke, his voice barely above a murmur, "What's going on, skipper?"

Trip turned his head only part way to allow the words to carry easier without drawing attention to the fact he was discussing issues with his XO, "Whatcha mean?"

"Scuttlebutt is you're off your keel, wanna give me a heads up?"

"I thought we'd try to break the nine barrier." Trip deflected, arms still folded across his chest as he watched the staff of the CIC hovering about their tasks.

"Why?"

"We've got somewhere we need t'be."

Al-Sistani called the bluff quickly and quietly, "I was advised as to why we're meeting up with the Clifton Sprague, they were kind of obscure as to what all is going on but does this have to do with the mating drive thing?"

Tucker looked over to the Yeoman, "Mister Gottlieb, how fresh is that coffee?"

He glanced over to the dispenser then back again, "Going on three hours, sir."

"Lord almighty…" Trip huffed, "Mister Snellis…"

The 3IC straightened slightly, "Sir?"

"You have the conn, XO and I are gonna acquire somethin' drinkable."

Andy knew well enough to understand this was pretense for a private conference between the two commanding officers, knew it might have to do with Tucker's rather uncharacteristic behavior since they had entered the anomaly, but he also knew it was his job to act as the buffer in this situation. "Aye, sir."

He remembered three weeks prior when they were preparing to get underway the conversation he had with his former CO about Tucker, and while they were floating around in the alternate expanse he had pulled Tucker's public MCS record. It was a startling read, Tucker was a man who had done just about everything in MCS at one point or another. From his initial background as a lab jockey to his inclusion in Naval Special Warfare in the 47 war, he had more combat jumps than all but a handful of the MARSOC Marines on board and had, quite literally, kept Shi'kahr from falling during the Romulan Invasion. He was, in terms of MCS, a man in full and worthy of the respect accorded him by Commander Al-Sistani. If he had some foibles, then they would just have to be endured because he'd earned the right to be quirky. Snellis still wasn't sure what read he could get on him as a person, but as an officer he'd proved himself multiple times over, and that was just since Snellis had been posted under him.

Besides, he'd gotten them all back home hadn't he? He'd resolved a sizable strategic threat to their plane of existence, he'd defused a multi-dimension spanning incident and helped broker peace for their counter-parts in another damn universe. And he had done it all without them losing a single person. The worst casualty they had endured was when a crewmen down in environmental controls rolled his ankle climbing a ladder. Furthermore, they'd, once again, put _Tirpitz_ through her paces and even with the best the enemy could throw at them, they hadn't managed to chip the paint. On top of all that, he could sense that Tucker had developed a genuine trust for his abilities which, when taken into consideration with the man's combat history, was strangely flattering.

* * *

><p>"This doe'n't feel like warp nine!" Tucker bellowed as he entered the power-plant hold on the engineering section.<p>

If Gibberti had been physically capable of jumping out of his skin, Trip was relatively sure there would have currently been a blood-stained sack of skin lying on the floor right this second. The look of unvarnished horror on the faces of the plant technical crewmen told a story of its own as they found themselves unwitting accomplices to Gibberti's mutiny. The chief's engineer's demeanor didn't really fit either. Mutineers were supposed to be defiant, recalcitrant, the Fletcher Christian sort…not some kid that just got caught sneaking money from their parents' wallets. Trip wasn't about to let up though, his irritation level was peaked. The feed-back he was getting from T'Pol was bad enough, but to see the look of subtle distaste on Al-Sistani's face had felt like a gut punch. The way it looked, the way it seemed was that Tucker was getting concierge service to bring his wife out so he could get to have a week long sex-binge. He would never say it, never hint at it…hell, he probably understood the reality of it, but as the ultimate advocate for the crew, how did you even begin to explain, to contextualize once the scuttlebutt started as it, inevitably, would?

Even the order for warp 9 could be assessed as dubious. He was trying to speed things up so, ostensibly, he could get between T'Pol's legs even faster. Technically that was partially true, but Trip had been chomping at the bit to see how far above the listed rating they could push the engine since _Tirpitz_ had slipped its moorings. Gibberti had no idea what was going on, Trip had identified him as a trouble maker early on and did pretty much anything he could to keep the man out of the loop. For all the talent and ambition he had on this boat it seemed like the chief engineer was the clear case of someone's nephew getting preferential treatment.

Trip pointed to the engine displays on the console in front of him, big bright red numbers showing warp 8.533 as their current relative velocity. "Right there, does that say eight six? Does it say eight seven? Do we have a reading issue here mister Gibberti?"

"We need to-"

Trip cut him off, "We're not even goin' our maximum known speed as is, you addin' the coal by hand?"

"Any alteration of the accepted parameters need-"

"I know we could be doin' warp eight six right now, where's that other point zero seven warp?" Tucker snapped, cutting him off again before he could attempt to needle more. "You got seven people standing right there, right now, whatcha tryin' to do, make more steam with the hot air?"

A junior Machinist's Mate spoke up, holding a PADD in his hand as if it was physically burning him to hold, there was a kind of subtle disgust and shame in his eyes, "Sir, we were advised we need to manually check the plant settings before we could make revolutions for warp nine, sir."

Tucker eyed the uniform, spotting the name Boggsley on the NWU jacket. "Do you know the function of check-sums, mister Boggsley?"

The kid nodded, "I do, sir."

"Do you know why we have them?" Trip inquired again, looking over the eight people before him.

"To validate that engine settings are mathematically sound, sir." He answered, clearly uncomfortable with being singled out but clearly quietly seething at the division chief who had put him in front of his Captain for interrogation.

"Do you know what those lil green check-marks in each of those boxes means?"

"That the values have been validated as within the functioning operating range of the systems they're intended for, sir."

Trip folded his arms across his chest, switching his gaze to Gibberti who he was sure would burst into flames any moment at the pure wattage Tucker was pushing through his eyes, "So why do they need to be revalidated via manual equation testing?"

"I would conclude that they would not need to be, sir." Boggsley declared, part of his voice hitching to indicate he knew this could spell his doom in the department but viewing it as a sacrifice to be endured for the sake of history and the approval of the nigh-legendary skipper.

"Mister Cruz!" Tucker barked, prompting the Lieutenant to appear to his left.

"Sir!" the deeply tanned El Paso native declared, hand clasped behind his back.

"Mister Cruz, take mister Boggsley and input the figures provided for the warp nine revolutions, if you would."

The shorter officer eyed Gibberti and shook his head reprovingly for a moment, "Aye aye, sir."

"The engines are yours Mister Cruz, please advise the staff to make revolutions for warp nine and commence with making speed." Tucker didn't lift his eyes from Gibberti who was seeming to shrink visibly at news that he had been relieved.

"By your leave, sir?" Cruz ritualistically deferred.

"Carry on, lieutenant." Trip replied, the rank codifying his current status of officer in charge.

Cruz looked at the remaining six crewmen, sparing the look at Gibberti, "Return to your duty stations."

Gibberti didn't look at anyone, just locked his eyes forward, taking deep breaths as the color started creeping more obviously into his face. There was a small tremor in his hands, hanging uselessly at his sides, but it wasn't rage, it was terror, painting him head to toe…two coats.

"Mister Gibberti, you are relieved." Tucker spoke in an even tone; the words both a declaration and an order.

"This is insane the engines won't-"

"I'm giving you a once inna life-time pass, mister." Tucker growled, bringing his face to within inches of that of the engineer's, "You're tired'n not thinkin' straight so I'm releavin' you of duty until you can unfuck yourself. You can march your ass to your quarters right now or I will ninja punch you so fuckin' hard that by the time you land it's gonna be mandatory retirement and that's _if_ Black, Gardner, and Forrest don't fuckin' end you right then, right there for refusin' an order from the man who built the goddamn engines in the first place!"

Gibberti made eye contact, finding some splinter of spine to fire one back to the CO, "You're a staff officer; you're not supposed to make these kind of decisions."

"Says who? On paper this is still sea-trials and if I ask you to push the systems beyond listed specification you have to provide me with a damn good reason why it can't or shouldn't be done."

"The engines aren't designed for warp nine!" Gibberti shouted back.

"And you know that because it says on them 'not designed for warp nine'?"

"I know that because I know engines!" Gibberti spat back.

"Our warp five power plant was based on an engine rated for warp four, our warp seven five power plant is based on one that was designed to run at five, the eight ones were originally based on the seven fives which meant we pushed three point one warp factor out of a plant that was never supposed to do more'n five. I've been fiddlin' with engines since I was eleven years old, I know what they can and can't do." Tucker fired back, his voice still holding an edge but drained of much of the original venom there.

"How the hell can you know anything about engineering when you're too busy off playing war hero like you think you're Ernest fucking Hemmingway?"

_Stau sa. Stau sa i._

Oh that would make it all so simple wouldn't it? Kal-i-fee by proxy, he kills a subordinate, and the whole feedback thing satisfies her blood fever, but then its murder charges. Ignore T'Pol, ignore the needling, don't project, but damnit, how? He could barely keep his own mind focused on his duty right now, how was he supposed to do it all and block her when he wasn't sure he could avoid projecting much less any other psychic gymnastics.

"I don't think I just heard you right."

Gibberti seemed to find some vestige of backbone that must have never existed before because he shouted back at the commanding officer, "You're a freak-of-nature ego case. Your head is too far up your own ass and getting ribbons to have the first clue how an engineering section is supposed to be run!"

Trip didn't know if the dumb son of a bitch had just made it easier or harder, because there was only one conclusion now, only one course of action to resolve this issue. No fewer than five different people heard the outburst as evidenced by the way they turned with mouths momentarily pried ajar in an expression of aghast nigh-religious terror at the chain-of-command-relative blasphemy that had just been uttered. The spike of aggression that came from T'Pol tightened his fists into bludgeons that could smash bone, pulp flesh, and just generally kill with such proficiency as to almost be aplomb. He found his own want to deck the arrogant bastard magnified into down-right murderous vigor courtesy of T'Pols hormone addled brain. It didn't take his fist moving more than a millimeter from where it sat cradled in the nook of his folded arms for the screaming voice of discipline and protocol-directed reason to reassert control over him.

He'd signed up for this by proxy; being a captain meant being questioned, meant being resented, meant being the de-facto weeder who crushed some careers and elevated others for the good of the service. This was the first time in his career that he had been presented with this level of recalcitrance and resentment, but that's just what happened when they pinned that eagle on you and you went from being a member of a crew to its master. How would Jon act in this situation? The words began springing from his lips almost before he could postulate how to phrase them and he was stunned just a little to hear Jonathan Archer in every word.

"You're done, mister…you're off my boat." Tucker straightened, his voice once again going flat, "You can go to your rack and pack your duffle or I can toss you in the brig and you'll get it when we get around to sendin' it. Clear my engine room."

It came so naturally, so fluid that it almost seemed practiced, there wasn't any more animus there than should have reasonably been projected at an individual who broke their oath of duty. At any other time he'd have relieved the man, sent him to his quarters to stew, then held a Captain's Mast before further action was taken. An NJP hurt bad at officer rank, mostly because it just skirted court-martial in terms of severity, but to be tossed off a boat by the ranking officer; his career was done, he would be toxic, nobody would touch him. He could maybe, in four or five years, secure a berth for himself on some in-system patrol boat or as a fleet-yard jockey, but he would never get command of an engineering department again in this navy after an Attack Boat skipper tossed him out on his ass.

"Mister Cruz, are you ready to take us to warp nine?" Tucker inquired, not even looking back at Gibberti to see if the man had started preparing to leave the area.

"Aye aye, sir, protocols are in place, we will begin the process on your order."

Trip gave a succinct nod, Cruz had the right attitude of curiosity, wanting to see where they could push things, what threshold they could break today. It was a desire, no, a need, to do things bigger, do them better. It was a lot like the way Kelby had been when he first got assigned to _Enterprise_ back in 49. Hell, he had been the exact same way, Trip had always wanted to go just a few feet more, a few feet faster, If you could sustain 7.4 without issue, why not 7.5, if 7.5 why not 8?

Trip felt and heard the pitch of the power plant change, the heat in the room climbed a few degrees and the heartbeat of the ship quickened. He glanced over to the relative speed readout display as the numbers quickly rolled over to 8.61 as the digits began a slow laborious climb; 8.621, 8.643, 8.677, 8.724. All the tricks he had learned in pushing both _Enterprise_ and _Tirpitz's_ engines beyond their design specifications had culminated in this series of sub-routines and program heuristics that Cruz had implemented, and based on the sensation he was feeling in the deck plates he had to assume that everything was going well. As if to confirm this the readout rolled over to 8.815.

"How's our intermix?" Cruz barked as he stood glued to the main engine control console, finger hovering over the override and shut-down emergency keys.

"Intermix is in the green, we're throwing some neutrons but its within tolerances." Someone fired back from over at the deuterium/anti-deuterium flow regulation station shouted in reply.

Tucker watched as Cruz ran a recalculation check-sum, his lips slowing moving in a simple mantra, "C'mon baby, c'mon baby."

8.889

8.931

"Captain Tucker, pending a psychiatric evaluation I am relieving you of command!" Gibberti suddenly thundered as if some measure of spine had crept its way through deck plating and up his leg and, consequently, vacated him of his senses.

They had just made history, they were about to put the stamp on it via validated whole numbers, but in this moment Gibberti had decided to rebel against fate and in the whole bizarre comedy of errors, had failed to do so correctly.

"S-sir, you cannot relieve a superior officer of command without referencing the correct violation of the Uniform Code." The fresh faced non-comm who spoke seemed utterly appaled by the breach of decorum and policy more than the idea that the former Division Chief was attempting what amounted to mutiny.

8.974

Tucker turned his head and speared Gibberti with a condescending and irritated glare, "Get the hell out of here before I toss you out."

"Here it comes!" Cruz hollered over the din in the engine room as the heat exchange fans cut into over-time to compensate for the building heat.

8.992

"Lieutenant Cruz, I am ordering you to power down the engi-" Gibberti didn't get to finish.

"WARP NINE!" A dozen voices seemed to scream at once, an adulation as being the first, at getting their names written indelibly in history for achieving what, by most reckonings, had never been done…ever.

The display showed 9.04 as current relative speed.

The 2MC cut in over the speakers in the engine hold, "Engineering, this is CIC, XO confirms present speed at warp niner point zero four, the date and time have be recorded in the ship's log, the information will be submitted to MCS command to validate the record. You have the XO's compliments."

There were some back-pats and grins now, the thing they had done overriding the white elephant, literally, standing in the room.

"CIC this is the captain," Tucker began, "please instruct the fleet marine detail to send personnel to remove lieutenant commander Gibberti from the engineering hold. Lieutenant Cruz is now active division chief."

There was a pause, the silence positively awkward, it almost felt like discomfort was physically radiating from the speakers, down from the CIC like liquid flooding into the command and control center and running down wires and pipes to drip on the floor. This had to be a fun position to put Nasir in, double so Andy Snellis.

"This is the XO, roger that, I'm getting a pair of Marines detailed right now." The voice of Al-Sistani came back over the line, devoid of reservation or discomfort at the command. Trip found a strange sense of appreciation in the fact that he was backing the play without any question. Not more than twenty minutes before Nasir had been look at him like something was growing out of his head when Trip had tried to give a cursory explanation of Pon Farr to the Iraqi XO.

Interestingly enough, the buzz of thought from T'Pol had quieted; the frantic activity of her mind dying down to little more than a dull murmur. He felt a momentary spike of concern and was just about to try to reach out to her through their telepathic hardline when she sent a single thought.

_You did what you had to, he left you no choice._

* * *

><p>"Solan?"<p>

Someone was talking to him, but that could wait, he had to do something about the itch momma felt in her tummy but seemed to have worked its way into his head. He felt it in his nose, in his eyes, in his ears, but mostly inside his head where he couldn't scratch it, and even as it seemed to lessen it grew more intense, because, he couldn't _not_ think about it now. When momma was here he could focus on being good, to make sure momma didn't have to worry about when she wasn't thinking about the itch and dadda. She thought about him a lot lately, and sometimes she thought about weird things. She thought about the way they wrestled and how he would kiss momma when they wrestled and how sometimes momma would make sounds like he dadda was hurting her but she didn't mind and she kind of liked it.

All those thoughts were kind of a distant swirl of sound and sensation and thought that kind of made a buzz in his brain and it frustrated him because it frustrated momma and he hoped, as she seemed to hope, that dadda could fix it all.

"Solan?"

He looked up to see his foremother, and he rubbed his nose to deal with the itch there that wouldn't seem to go away.

"Are you alright?" She had momma's ears and he could see momma in her eyes too, and that was strangely comforting.

"I have'a itch." He declared, "in here," he pointed to his head, where the disjoined, dislocated chaos from Momma's brain swirled around in his.

"Are you unwell?" She asked, her tone so even it was hard for him to get a good read on her. With momma he could always feel what she didn't say because her words were never enough. With foremother he had to guess based on what momma would feel when she said something. He surmised that foremother was concerned and replied as such.

"I's momma's itch, but I can't help her wif it." He answered with a solemn frown given the solemnity of the issue and his incapacity to remedy it.

She arched her brow, which when momma did that, it meant so many possible things that he couldn't begin to surmise what she felt. "You can feel your mother's thoughts?"

He nodded, "Uh huh, but I's quiet now, so I only part hear it."

"Is your father there?" The foremother asked, her brow still arched.

"No, he not there yet. Momma is thinking bad things to say to him, but it makes dadda happy so she's happy but she's also got 'da itch."

The brows furrowed, and a contemplative frown crossed her face, "Is that so?"

"Uh huh, right now momma is thinkin'at she wanna bite dadda, n dadda is gonna bite her back but he was gonna bite her somewhere else. She wants dadda to bit her there."

"How are you aware of all of this?"

Solan folded his tiny arms across his chest, his expression shifting to what momma always thought of as "kolinahr-kam" when she saw it. "I can't really hear it, it's quiet like they're far away, but I can see it."

Foremother's eyes went wide, "You can see what they're doing?"

Poor foremother, she just wasn't grasping any of this, he needed to explain it, and when his expression shifted this time the muscles brought back memories of what he had felt from momma when he used this expression which was "smart ass". They weren't momma's words, they were dadda's words but she used them because she didn't have words that worked, "Nuh uh, they aren't doin' anything yet, momma isn't wif dadda yet." He thought for a moment then looked back up with an inquisitive expression, "What does 'guv-ti-rivak-tor nash'veh' mean?"

Foremother bolted upright, "I think it is time we provided another form of distraction for you."

* * *

><p>"I want you to set all our non-potable scrubbers to run on constant cycle, we never did a test on 'em and I want to see if there is a fail-over in case we need to use the non-primary storage for emergency potable water supply at any point in the future." It was one of those reasonable shake-down tests that were often overlooked until it became an issue, so it seemed a tame enough request to make. Of course it wasn't so much an effort to ensure the system was functioning as to allow the sound of constantly running water between bulkheads to create some sound-dampening around his quarters.<p>

He'd received a communication from the _Sprague_ forty five minutes earlier informing him they had a highly agitated Vulcan who was to be conducted onboard and whether or not any security considerations were required. The commander's word had elicited mental images of T'Pol climbing the walls in the _Clifton Sprague _which Trip had found intensely amusing but that resulted in just more suggestive profanity from T'Pol's end of the telepathic link. At this point all he was getting from her was an almost morbidly precise catalog of his anatomy and how and with which body part specifically she planned on interacting with it. It was interesting to discover that she probably had a more intimate understanding of the nuances of his privates than he himself had, and at least part of him was wondering about the accuracy of the memories T'Pol was projecting and if some of it wasn't, perhaps, wishful thinking on the part of the quiet-literally sex-crazed Vulcan in terms of the generosity by which she recollected certain proportions.

Cruz nodded, he was being given a trial run as a division chief and he seemed to be enjoying the responsibility. Gibberti was a micro-manager of the worst kind which meant that Lieutenant Cruz was regularly treated as if he were Ensign Cruz. It didn't help that Trip was, himself, the sort of absentee land-lord of the engineering division from whom most of the think-tanking came, so Gibberti was, at best, a middle-manager with Cruz languishing in an ideal posting that he was disallowed to shine in. As it was, he presented with nearly rabid enthusiasm he was doing his best to tamp down.

"Sir, if I might make a request?"

Trip, couldn't ignore the eagerness of the young engineer, even as he fought back the effects of T'Pol's loudly projected desire, "What would that be, lieutenant?"

"Sir, if possible I want to put some EPS traps between the main power transformers and the capacitor banks, I noticed that when we take shots to the shields the sections with generators feeding from the same transformers as supply the rail guns, we get some feedback that pushes up to the capacitor banks. The effect is nothing right now, but over enough time it'll start to burn out coils and before long we could start seeing them scramming in a fire-fight."

Problem solving, preventative thinking, refine your craft while correcting issues that hadn't come up yet; if he could get a good division chief in here this kid would be moving up to command of his own department in no time. What he needed was Kelby in here as task master, he had never once not been up to any task Trip gave him and that had included some of the hazing the younger officer had endured when he had first been placed under Trip's command. He still remembered the day, still remembered how he had made it a bit too obvious he was testing, then, Lieutenant Junior Grade Greg R. Kelby, before he was willing to acknowledge him as deserving to be part of his division on _his_ boat. He had tasked the young man with the unenviable task of scouring the dorsal railgun barrel assemblies to remove carbon buildup. A completely unnecessary shit-detail as those guns were set to be replaced inside six months having been repurposed from a gunnery qualification scow that had been pelting asteroids for the better part of fifteen years to teach naval gunnery.

Kelby had known exactly what this was and narrowing his eyes had told Tucker why it was a good idea and militarily pertinent to do so. Trip had spent the next 36 hours quietly tormenting himself over it, how Kelby had realized why the course of action was, in fact, a good idea more so than Trip had. Kelby had turned attempted hazing into judicious use of resources and time and had, probably, gotten another six thousand shots of service life out of all the guns that would have been scrap worthy in another hundred. That had been the point where Trip decided that Kelby would be his number two over Hess and Rostov who were neck and neck at the finish line prior to that day.

He never got the impression that Kelby was adventurous when it came to the practical aspects of their craft, but he had practical knowledge and understanding that was worlds beyond the text book. It was almost like he had a shop full of old-timers in his head who knew folk remedies for anything that could ail the mechanical or electronic but always knew the specific science behind why those off-the-wall solutions would work. Based on the reports he'd seen over the past two years he'd witnessed the evolution of the man as division chief keeping the broke-down wreck of _Enterprise_ looking like a fresh-off-the-line flagship with an abundance of solutions to make sure she kept running until they turned off the lights once and for all.

He _had_ to get him on this boat, he had to get him working with Cruz to begin the next breed of engineers ready for the technology in the pipeline, but most of all, he just wanted to have his friend and co-worker back.

"That's good thinkin' lieutenant, you can detail crews and begin requisition and fabrication as needed."

They'd been holding steady at warp nine for three hours now and the _Sprague_ was fifteen minutes from rendezvous, leaving Trip with only 2 dozen things left to take care of or personally see to before a very turned-on and very irrational Vulcan would start demanding his personal attention. But more than anything else, he knew she was just frustrated; frustrated at not being in command of her own body, frustrated at being in this state not because of an election of her own or as the result of unforeseen circumstance, but rather because of some cruel move of biology that mandated this ridiculous behavior. She was embarrassed for her own behavior but unable to do anything about it because the instincts were calling the shots now and no matter how hard she tried to contextualize it, she couldn't get over the fact that this was ridiculous and counterintuitive. She didn't need the mating cycle when mated to a human, it was debatable if it was even necessary when mated to a Vulcan. This was just another hold-over from an ancient past that was long gone and no longer worthy of consideration. This plak tau wasn't the result of her own desire of her mate, this was instinct and she felt a growing sense of irritation on top of the urgency because it wasn't giving her the feeling of validation she wanted. Then there was the subtle fear that Trip wouldn't be able to get her through it, that somehow the differences in biology would rear its ugly head and decide this was the line that was not to be crossed.

The CMO of the _Tirpitz_ had received a rather brief report on some things to possibly expect from their soon-to-be Vulcan passenger and the specific stressors that would be placed on the CO in his capacity as the individual specifically involved with the treatment of the passenger so he had supplied Trip with a battery of medications with brief and generic descriptions of their uses and application in broadly military terms. Uppers, downers, pain killers, fluid volume expanders, an anti-psychotic, a mild euphoric, and one pill that said nothing beyond the rather specific warning "may cause priapism" which Trip was not sure he was happy about and left him wondering more than just a little why this battery of drugs were present on the ship.

What the hell did a sailor need with a four hour hard-on, and why was a warship set up to provide for that rather atypical medical need? Any port they put into for liberty likely had a local proprietary blend that could provide for the same thing, if, perhaps, at a higher relative risk to the sailor in question, which might perhaps be the reasoning behind having something that was tried-and-true on the ship. What had Phlox said about sexual health being part of the overall health of the crew? Or had he specifically said reproductive? Then again, that might have just been his way of being diplomatic about it. He almost chuckled to himself as he realized there had been a time when a four hour erection might have seemed like a good thing. The things you did in your twenties suddenly seemed so absurd once you crossed that threshold into being an "adult" in your thirties. Of course it only took one or two marathon sessions of sex to come to the conclusion that it was not that pleasant and experience once the alcohol or "herbal supplement" had worn off and you became fully aware of the strain you'd put yourself through. Augmentation did a lot for stamina and physical conditioning, but there were certain parts of the anatomy that just were not _ever_ meant to be used for that long.

So, of the things he absolutely had to take care of in the next fifteen minutes there were still shift rosters and the logs that needed to be approved, finalization of the playlist in his quarters, sign-off on leave requests for their next time in port, make sure that the "dryness" lubricant he'd requested was available, confirm receipt of after action reports with the quartermaster for ammunition expenditure, make sure the mess department had received the memo on Vulcan dietary requirements, review the binnacle list of the last week, verify that the baby names book he'd looked up had finished downloading, formally complete command transition for medical leave, and make sure all the sensors and biometric feed-back systems in his quarters were "malfunctioning".

This was starting to feel like a chore.

* * *

><p>Some part of his brain that was still conscious of his immediate surroundings marveled at how far the buttons had flown. The same part reflected on how the stitches had managed to hold up despite the force applied to them in the arms, shoulders, and collar, yet those that secured the buttons had failed catastrophically. There was a need for redesign in this area if nowhere else.<p>

At least he'd been able to get his boots and socks off, he wasn't sure he would have been able to perform with boots and socks on, it was a peculiar quirk, but he felt there was a minimum level of dignity and decorum and male footwear did not figure into it.

God, she was hot, her flesh positively searing against his.

"Universe, surrounds. When you're ready, it waits, for us to leave this earth. Come on, they're calling your name out."

The bolts were holding on the desk, that was good, he'd wondered if the mounting system was sufficient given the fact it wasn't mooring directly to a bulkhead. Still, with the wall and soundproofing material it would have been problematic to produce a proprietary adapter for direct mounting.

Heh, mounting, speaking of which…who was mounting who?

Was her tongue in his mouth or in his brain, he couldn't quite figure that part out because he thought he felt it both places at once.

And there went the undershirt…the last shreds torn away, but how the hell had she found the proper leverage to get that kind of grip?

Pants, around ankles…tripping hazard…

Heh, Trip.

He lifted first the right foot then the left out, did that count as forward momentum? Wait, moot point, he wasn't even inside her yet, which made for a rather odd coincidence since the first thing she had done when the door closed was begin tearing off her own clothes.

Tan-lines, she had tan-lines, God that was sexy. Everything was kind of green, just some of it was darker green than other parts, and kind of washed over bronze, the tanned fleshed almost an earthy brown and the lighter skin on her breast around the nipples and her crotch almost a pale celadon.

Tanning facility, or the simulacrum there-of, they needed one on the ship, he was way to pale by comparison, the farmer's tan on his arms, neck, and face had already lightened well beyond his ideal shade.

"I don't know, I could stay or leave…either way. Cause the comet can take us, all the way, through."

_Sahris, sahris, klee, palikau, guv-tvi-rivek-tor t'nash-veh._ She hissed mentally as she unlocked from his lips and sunk her teeth into his shoulder, grinding against his stomach trying to find the organ she felt wasn't doing its intended job.

_Tranush-tor, pavesh kal-tor…_He countered calmly, as he brought a hand down, clamping on her left hip and pushing her away just enough to slip the same right hand between her legs and began plying the tender flesh to prepare her for eventual entry.

He felt teeth clamp down on his right shoulder, hard, as fingers seized onto the adjacent arm with steely resolve, mercifully short finger-nails trying to dig into flesh but failing. He grunted, it hurt, this was serious biting, not play or affection, she would continue the attack until she started receiving the desired stimulus. Her usual strength seemed magnified right now, and he felt the skin at the site of the bite compromise, breaking and drawing beads of blood to the surface where the canines of her upper and lower jaw penetrated. His brain was at war with itself; the system five modified low-expressing MAOA wanted to treat it as an attack and respond with immediate violence to end the threat, another part of his brain was dumping endorphins into his bloodstream, yet another part of his brain was getting turned on by it, and he couldn't exactly put his finger on why. There was almost a feral compulsion gnawing at the back of his mind, like that of an animal in rut, to overpower her, to punish or break for attempting the same on him. He couldn't tell if it was a human compulsion or some latent threads of expectation from the Plak-Tau but he hated it.

Why couldn't this be something to remember fondly? Was it always some violent animalistic mutual rape for Vulcans or did their logic do this to them? Did it get worse the more generations they spent suppressing their emotional responses?

The voice coming from the speakers at his console continued its strangled croon; "Goodbye! Say heaven. Know no one, I'll be waving, goodbye! Say heaven. Know no one, I'll be waving, good-bye."

One of her hands came up to his throat, and all he could feel was a single compulsion twisting its way through the bond like a dozen snakes coiling through a lattice, slipping in and out of the framework moving forward. If she couldn't compel him to give her what she needed, she would take it from him.

Instinct be, fucking, damned…

That was enough of _that!_

His right hand shot forward, seizing the arm at the wrist and wrenching it back and away, his face come to hers, lips drawn back in an angry grimace to bear his own teeth, "Ish-hiyet, T'Pol!"

She was startled, visibly shocked by the words leaving his mouth rather than his flaccid placating through the bond, he was even more surprised when it came out in Vulcan when he was certain he had mentally formed the words in English. Her lower lip quivered, her flushed face already beaded with moisture and hair matted. She looked like nothing if not some pitiful waif, wanting but unable to effectively communicate it. She pressed herself into the hand plying the perimeter of her femininity rolling her hips in a soft undulation, now playing the supplicant rather than the aggressor.

Her eyes locked on his, pupils going impossibly wide as she whispered the words.. "Pla-kur ak…"

He felt the tremble in her mind more than in her body.

Trip felt the fingers relax against his arm as well as the right arm he still held by the wrist that had gone for his throat.

_Sanu, sanu sanu, sanu ashau-nash-veh._

She was craning her head forward now, still held somewhat in place by her right arm, and his own right hand between her legs, her lips trying to brush his but repelled by some tentative almost virginal caution despite the fact his hand was playing at the outer folds with a sort of rhythmically practiced ease.

_Shok-tor. Pla-kur ak…_

Something about it killed the anger he was fighting against. The sexual nature of the way he was touching her almost seemed governed by instinctive knowledge, but combined threads of human wrath and Vulcan rage were still coloring his face, but her demeanor now…had he effectively established dominance, had he laid out the ground rules? No, this was for her…she needed this, if how she needed it would leave him blooded, bruised, and broken…so be it.

"Pla-kur ak…"

He slid a pair of fingers probingly within, "They are blue." He affirmed with a wry grin as her back arched at the intrusion, but her eyes didn't move from his.

"Afer-tor du!" She wailed uncharacteristically as her hands began grasping at his face and hair, not taking in a single other nuance of his face or body. "Afer-tor du, Pla-kur ak! Kir'sarlah-fam du po?"

"T'Pol, I did, I did come for you."

"Bek-tor akarshif na'du." Her eyes were starting to brim with lacrimal fluid, he couldn't bring himself to think of them as tears, not from a Vulcan. Her voice dripped with a kind of sad desperation, of a long unrequited longing he couldn't put his finger on. There was something so much more complex going on here than he could begin to understand, but he had to understand it because it seemed to have some meaning and significance well beyond just him.

"Return…to see, everything is the same. I don't know, if the change made was great, cause the craving remains the same."

She was strangely placid now, releasing the right wrist she wrapped her arms around him, pulling herself in slightly, but still holding away as if constantly wanting the subtle affirmation of permission before the next phase. Even with his fingers inside her, she still seemed to need some tacit approval from Pla-kur ak to give into the passion that seemed to roll off her mind like some inscrutable buffeting waves.

"I'm here now, darlin'."

Pulling his right hand away, he hooked his right arm beneath her bottom and the left behind her shoulders, lifting her effortlessly from the desk and carrying her towards the bed. The song continued as a weird synthesis of the quiet and loud as he carried her, the odds tones and instrumentation just punctuating the erstwhile sensuality of the moment. A week of this? He felt he could come out just fine, but some gnawing fear, a strange doubt that almost seemed to be coming as much from T'Pol's mind as his own seemed to warn; _don't believe it._

"Goodbye! Say heaven. Know no one, I'll be waving, goodbye! Say heaven. Know no one, I'll be waving, goodbye! I'll be waving, I'll be waving, goodbye! I'll be waving, I'll be waving, goodbye!"

* * *

><p><strong>[! Author's Note !]<strong>

**Trip digs on the Deftones.**


	53. Chapter 53

**[! WARNING: SEX !]**

**Chapter 53 contains sex in needlessly florid literary style that says nothing but implies everything. Sex has been linked to feelings of moderate vicarious excitement and a desire to attempt to carry out the anatomically questionable practices on a suitably disposed compatible partner. Sex has also been shown to be linked to feelings of abject disgust, embarrassment about reading about said act at work and questions regarding exactly how much of a cream-puff the author actually is. If you experience any of these side-effects, close the browser window and immediately seek entertainment in the form of How-To Videos such as "How to image a system using Symantec Ghost" or demonstrations on how to sweat pipes using a disposable oxyacetylene torch. If side effects persist, discontinue use and seek help from a sock and bottle of lotion or leave nasty reviews micro-managing story grammar and critical analysis of just how far off base all characterizations as depicted are. Chapter 53 has been known, in the state of California, to be an example of patriarchy and has been known to demonstrate the Male-Gaze and Rape-Culture. Chapter 53 contains triggers…what kind of triggers we're not certain of at this time because Tumblr couldn't be relied upon for long enough to provide a coherent explanation of what triggers actually are and how they apply in this situation. Chapter 53 has been known to catch fire while at high speeds and while raining. Do not attempt to use Chapter 53 while in the bathroom or preparing Fugu fish sushi. Do not taunt Chapter 53. If Chapter 53 begins to exhibit aggressive behavior, immediately lower your eyes, curl up on a ball on the floor, and mimic sheep or goat sounds. Chapter 53 has been known to spontaneously attack geese because geese are assholes no matter how majestic they may look from a distance. Not all side-effects will be the same and they may vary, consult at beta, pastor, or parent before attempting to utilize Chapter 53. If you suffer from a deficiency of low-grade-sub-mommy-pr0n fan fiction, then Chapter 53 just might be right for you.**

* * *

><p>Duras reflexively opened and closed his right hand, forming it into a fist that was impotent to resolve their present situation. They may have hard the numbers on their side, but the qarDaSgnan warships were definitely larger and seemed to be better armed. The question had almost immediately sprung to his mind that perhaps the success of the original foray had been highly exaggerated and if it were not a case that Khurd had left their space just ahead of an angry mob.<p>

He didn't want to doubt his friend, and even as hard as he tried to consider the possibility he honestly could not see that such events could have happened with Khurd in command. Then again, this was an alien culture, and one that was perhaps hyper-susceptible to slight or insult. As it was, Krapt currently stood at the forefront of the viewscreen, split between his ship and those of the other three in the convoy with the strangely ridged, thick-necked scowling visage of the qarDaSgnan captain staring back at them.

Both Khurd and Krapt took turns speaking to the captain in his native tongue while the universal translators began slowly working out what the pair of Klingon speakers were saying. The language was polite, deferential; perhaps more so than was to be expected from a Klingon warrior, but it made sense given they were entering qarDaSgnan territory and would be expected to extend them the due courtesy. As Khurd declared they would lower shields and power down weapons to allow the captain to scan their ships' contents Duras gave a nod to his shield and navigational systems officer who complied with the volunteered concession. The entire time the weapons remained armed on the patrol ship as the qarDaSgnan captain had his sensor officer carefully document the contents of each ship.

This seemed to cause the ridge-necked alien to calm visibly, the stern countenance relaxing only to have his attention momentarily stolen by a chiming on the bridge of his ship. He looked down as if to read something then brought his head back up showing visible embarrassment. To Duras' delight, the universal translator began processing his own speech as he spoke.

"I must extend full apologies for detaining you, honored guests. Please proceed, you should be able to power up your shields and weapons to your normal state of readiness with no further harassment, on behalf of the Cardassian people, I welcome the clan of Lo'wahl back to our territory."

Duras nodded to himself with clear satisfaction at the proceedings, the qarDaSgnan showed courtesy, respect, and honor on top of their clear military readiness; all qualities one sought in an ally. It was his task to begin treating with them in terms of shared relations beyond mere trade and while he felt they would be open to this idea, they would also be shrewd, and the thought of this almost made him more excited about the eventuality of negotiation; an ally who was wise, even cunning, was better than one who was unreservedly open. With his holds full of gifts to honor his hosts he felt reasonably certain that by the end of these proceedings there would be an open trade corridor between their peoples if nothing else, but even something so simple was a strong foundation on which to build alliances.

"Krapt." He called out from his command chair.

"Sir?"

"Contact Khurd, advise him to get the other ships to dip our cannons in pass."

The young Klingon furrowed his brown then nodded, "A salute, a fitting gesture to show respect to their captain."

"We will illustrate out strength through deference where it is not necessary and in all things we shall seem martial, if they see us as warriors of honor then they will not come to expect duplicity from us." Duras elaborated, and there was a kind of logic to it. Without an empire united in common cause, it was up to the representatives they did have to the qarDaSgnan to appear in a way that at once satisfied an expectation and served as paragon of that expectation.

"In all things, honor." Krapt provided as a sort of benediction, he turned to the communication station, "Relay the captain's recommendation to the group."

* * *

><p>As hard as she tried to focus on the reading selection she had on the PADD, T'Les found herself distracted. Not buy the domestic entertainment device that was covering a rather loud and lively human sports match consisting of two teams attempting to score points by the process of taking an elliptical leather ball through a prescribed scoring line, not buy Solans occasional fidgeting, but rather by the Sehlat which was staring mesmerized at the mounted trophy head and neck of the buck it had slain almost a week before.<p>

For the fifth time that she counted, she watched as the creature which had been sitting on its haunches staring at the display for the last thirty minutes at least canted its head to the side quizzically then lifted itself from where it sat to his hind paws, placing his forepaws on the wall to sniff at the display as if trying to revalidate to itself that it was dead. Any time Solan would draw close to it, he'd leap to his paws and herd the young demi-Vulcan away until he'd once again inspect the trophy to determine whether or not it posed a threat to the child before letting him close again. The small brass plaque on the wooden shield-shapes mount bore the inscription listing the sehlat as "Teeth Tucker" with the date of the kill and the pre-dress weight of the animal. This had prompted some research on her part and she discovered that the majestic looking creature truly was an exemplar among its kind as most white-tail deer listed at weights of between 80 and 120 terran avoirdupois pounds with a notation for kilograms parenthetically inserted.

"It is just as dead now as it was twenty minutes ago." T'Les gently scolded, finding herself amused by the fact she had already adopted the human custom of speaking to the Animal despite certainty on her part that the smilidon was incapable of understanding her words.

As if to contradict this belief the creature chuffed at her then crossed the couch on which she sat and climbed up to the end opposite her before settling down. She gave no heed to the behavior and went back to her reading when Solan let out a cry of consternation. She looked up to see the child approach the couch and looking at the sehlat with a quite clearly indignant expression began to chastise the creature.

"Get down, you know you're not 'sposed to get onna sofa!" He pointed to the floor, his tiny pointed ears visibly darkening a more olive shade.

The creature looked at him then made a protesting whining yowl.

"No! Get offa the sofa!"

The creature chuffed then let out a series of low yowls, varying in sound and pitch almost like the creature was attempting speech as it climbed down from its perch, its ears folded low in a way that looked like embarrassed contrition to T'Les. The creature skulked past the tiny pedagogue before abruptly turning his head and butting his forehead into the bottom of the he that had chastised him. Solan made a small sound of alarm as the creature to a jumping half spin and tore off out of the room at high speed. It only took a second for Solan to right himself and turning on his heel took off after the recalcitrant sehlat as a giggle that tried to exit his throat was choked off by sound of faux-indignity.

"You _bettuh_ run mithter!" He slurred as he took off after the creature on his tiny legs.

T'Les lowered the PADD, here is where she took issue, "Why would he declare the state of action was necessary when it was already occurring?"

"That's the human part…making it seem like he's in charge and that he's a threat." Charles Jr. answered from the other side of the sitting room where he was diligently polishing his son's dress white regalia, currently working on the shoes after having 'done the brightwork' which had referred to the officer's insignia, medals, and career certification devices. It was a tacit display of his intense pride and affection for his son, a seemingly understated act that most would overlook as anything more than the effects of boredom.

"So, stating the obvious as a form of bluster is universal to humans?"

"For the most part." Charles Jr. affirmed as he began working the soft-bristle brush across the white faux-leather of the dress uniform shoes.

"Interesting, such behavioral displays occurring despite the disparate cultural influences would make it appear that it is a genetic affectation. Have such things been studied?"

Charles shrugged, "Frankly, I have no idea, I was never the brightest bulb in the string."

T'Les furrowed her brow, "I had always assumed you were involved in the sciences."

He laughed, "I was…providing operational security and integrity, all the brains in the family skipped my generation and ended up in our kids, Trip getting' the lion's share it seems."

Elaine Tucker promptly entered the room, dragging the sehlat reluctantly by the tuft of fur and loose skin on the back of his neck and Solan by the back of his shirt. The sehlat made another series of low protesting yowls, again sounding as if it was attempting to ape speech.

"Charlie, you need to take this one for a walk and this one needs a nap."

The elder Mr. Tucker looked over to his grandson, "Alright, go get your leash." And he at that he winked, forcing a stifled giggle from the little pseudo-Vulcan.

The sehlat clearly knew what that word meant and twisted, breaking free of Elaine Tucker's grip and went bounding toward the foyer. Solan's mood then abruptly changed, big frustrated tears starting to fill his eyes, "I don' wanna go bed…its louder when I go t'bed."

His tiny face flushed a slightly greenish hue as his tightened his little hands into fist which he then rubbed angrily at the eyes filling with tears. His expression showed a kind of anguish that should have been years beyond his capacity to even begin to adequately experience, much less express and the three adults in the room turned to look at one another in turn sensing that something was profoundly disturbing their grandson beyond just the absence of both his parents.

Charlie Tucker glanced to Elaine then both of them walked their gaze over to T'Les who had stolidly placed the PADD on her lap, eyes closed for a moment as if in contemplation. The Vulcaness sat with flawless posture, seeming even more regal when compared to the kind of practiced casualness exhibited on the part of the elder Tuckers. She opened her eyes and turned part way on the couch to face the child.

"Solan, please come to me." The order was softly worded and she held out a hand towards him.

He complied, wiping the tear-wetted back of his hands against his short-pants before crossing to the couch where she sat. When he reached her, she reached forward to brush the strands of hair from his forehead then placed a pair of fingers at his left temple. She allowed her eyes to close for a moment before looking to the other adults in the room.

"His temperature is slightly elevated and he is experiencing great mental confusion and turmoil."

Charles Jr.'s countenance grew very grave, "It's because of the…" he snapped his fingers a few times, trying to spark recollection of the correct wording, "the…bond, he has with T'Pol, right?"

"I believe that to be the case." T'Les replied evenly with a hint of solemnity.

"Momma's confused, she is mad at dadda, but not mad at him. Then she sees the blue eyes and she thinks blue eyes is there, then she knows dadda is there 'n' she gets mad at him again." He sounded perplexed by the last part.

T'Les watched as Charles Jr. and Elaine shared a look, some unspoken recognition occurring there but neither spoke as T'Les pressed a pair of fingers to an area just above Solan's collar bone then another pair just above his waist to the side of his stomach. "Solan, go and make sure 'teeth' has acquired his walking harness and then you should go walk with your grandfather, when you return I will assist you in your nap."

He nodded, unhappily, but without defiance, "Kuhkay."

When the child had left she looked to the human adults, "I am going to give Solan a session of neuropressure to assist in his relaxation; that should allow him restful sleep which will greatly increase his ability to contend with the feedback from his mother."

"Trip has blue eyes…" Elaine said, "why do you think she's reacting to the eyes."

Charles Jr.'s expression was unpredictably dire, "Ellie, do you remember that time when Trip was about six months old that we went to Henderson Beach?"

Elaine Tucker rolled her eyes up and away as if physically accessing the memory, "Which time?"

"The last time we went." Charles said in a low, almost mournful tone.

Mrs. Tucker's hand came up to her mouth as her eyes went wide, paling visibly.

T'Les cocked a brow, "What was the significance of this occurrence?"

"When I was stationed out at Whiting Field we used to go down to the state park at Henderson Beach. We had placed Trip on a beach towel under a palm stand and were getting some things out of the car for Albert to play with, we only had our backs turned about two minutes and weren't too worried because I'm coded to superior sensory perception so I could hear if anything went wrong." The motion of the buffing brush stopped as other sounds seemed to fade out to lend additional attention to the words of the Tucker patriarch, "I heard Trip just babblin' away and he didn't sound upset or distressed so I didn't pay attention to the sound of the other person speaking, talking right to him. When we turned around, Trip was in the arms of a young Vulcan woman, and they were staring into each other's eyes. I shouted and started heading towards her but she didn't seem to react, just kept starin' at Trip and he was just starin' right back at her."

Charles put down the shoe he'd been working on, and folded his arms across his chest, staring towards the coffee table, and through it, as if cataloguing the electrons in the wood, his expression indescribably severe. "It was kind of like…Trip was staring into her, the way his expression was, the way his eyes were locked on hers, the way he was touching her face. It was like he could see right into her soul and he didn't make a sound the whole time. But she…" he made a huffing sound that could have been disbelief or a chuckle or a sound of derision, T'Les couldn't tell, "she was just caught by him, mesmerized, she couldn't see or hear or feel the world around her. I stopped a few feet away, because, I dunno, I could see something was going on. And then after a few minutes, she just set him down and walked away. I hadn't thought about it for years, we kind of wrote it off at the time but we never went back to Henderson after that."

T'Les felt the need to swallow but didn't do so.

"When we first met T'Pol I had completely forgotten about the event, it was one of those 'scary things that happened to your kids' you just kind of mentally file away once they get older, but it got me rememberin' it again." He continued.

T'Les felt a compulsion to ask, not even sure why she was feeling some peculiar sense of dread, "Did the young woman resemble T'Pol?"

Charles stood, pacing across the room, looking out through the bay windows to the beach in the distance as the ballgame in the background seemed to be drowned out by the gravity of memory that had seemed to thicken the air of the room with the subtlest threat that without a moment's notice it could all rush out. He turned to look to his wife, then to T'Les, "It _was_ T'Pol."

* * *

><p>Cupping water from the sink with his hands, he dipped his face into the soothing coldness of it only to have the relief stolen away by the sting of the abrasion on his cheek. He'd made the mistake of looking away, and suddenly he'd ceased to be pla-kar-uk and become some sort of stranger. Moments before she had been transfixed on those eyes, needing them, loving them, wanting them, but then had looked away for a moment and he was an object for her to destroy; physically, sexually, mentally.<p>

How had he not learned his lesson yet? He looked at the bruises on his chest and sides, some the dull ache of black and blue, others angry red where blood continued to slowly seep just below the skin. She didn't hold back a second when he was no longer pla-kar-uk and what frightened him more than anything was that she seemed to know he was Trip when she was doing it. It had not taken him long to figure out that she was not referring just to his eyes, but rather to an idea or a person…pla-kar-uk was the name of someone who was identifiable only by that single feature and part of him began to wonder if, perhaps, T'Pol had not, in fact, had another lover prior to him, one who controlled her in a way he never could. The doubts it engendered bothered him more than he felt he had any right to allow, he'd had other women before, other partners, women he'd thought he _might_ have loved. But the idea that T'Pol had one for whom her soul had burned and he was just a pale replacement almost ached.

"Ra aitlu tan-tor, nash-veh." She growled from in the room, sitting on the floor, her naked body supine but with a kind of tension in her arms and legs that threatened an attack at less than a moment's notice. The sheet was coiled part way around her in some perversion of a toga that covered all the non-essential and revealed every bit of the essential. Her own throat was bruised from where he'd tried to hold her back when she had gone for his eyes in one of those moments he wasn't Pla-kar-uk.

"Just a minute." He pleaded with exasperation, less than 48 hours in and he was already a wreck. She fell asleep after their seventh coupling, and he was able to get about three hours of sleep before she awoke and attacked, rousing him with a hard cuff to the head when he hadn't managed to produce a sleep-erection for her to utilize. Of course that hadn't helped tremendously as it had taken him another twenty five minutes to manage a minimum level of usability and had been forced to use his fingers and the hypnotizing effect of the eyes to mesmerize her long enough to prevent additional attacks. There had seemed to be moments when she acknowledged him as Trip, but even then she was boisterous beyond what he was used to and mated with a fervor that left him incidentally injured instead of deliberately.

As if to reinforce it all, his bruised left testicle hit his upper left thigh, sending a jolt of stomach churning pain through him.

_It's not about me, it's about her…it's not about me, it's about her. She needs this, what kind of man am I if I can't give her what she needs?_

He reached for the bottle of stimulants, opening the bottle and dropping out a pair of pills which he quickly cupped into his mouth before leaning into the sink to drink them down with water from the tap.

_Love is war, love is a battlefield, I'd die for her; I can certainly take some bruises from her._

He felt something snap in his brain with an intensity that almost seemed physical.

_Trip!_

_I'm here, darlin'._

_Trip-ip-ip-ip-ip, Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriip!_ She mentally rolled the "r" and he felt a giggle in the bond.

He looked into the room as she looked around, breathing heavily as she did so.

"Ahh Jesus, you're off your gourd aren't you?"

"K'avon nash-veh."

Well it was about time for that, it might even give him a few minutes respite for the stimulant to kick in and mentally work himself up for the next few hours until she passed out from exhaustion again. By his best figured he couldn't possibly have any sperm left, it was just seminal fluid without the prize inside. Another few hours of this and he'd need to put his balls on ice just to make it through.

Of course he'd prepared for the event they would need something to eat. A heuristic he'd tied into the room's sensors and routed to his desktop console would put in a call to the mess for non-perishable food items to be delivered outside his door five minutes after biometric signatures began indicating a sleep cycle, entry into the latrine/shower, or whenever T'Pol's pulse dropped to under 35 beats per minute at any point he build in a 12 hour lock-out period so that only 2 request could be sent in a 24 hour period, they'd just have to make do with that even though he was relatively sure he'd blown through what _had_ to be a few million calories since it all began.

He quickly pulled on some sweatpants, eliciting a sound of protest from her and made for the door, opening it, peaking outside, and grabbing a plastic meal transfer box from just outside the door. He hadn't even been able to stand back up when she pounced on his back. The change in weight characteristics caused his balance to shift but he managed to redistribute his weight quick enough to avoid falling forward, righting himself and stepping back into the room with naked Vulcan clinging to his back and a tray in his hands. She wrapped her arms around his neck but wasn't trying to choke him, she was trying to hang on, there was no biting, no clawing, no gouging, at any other time he would have found it delightfully playful. He took just long enough to thank God, fate, and the law of averages that there hadn't been anyone outside the door when the pounce came as it would give them all a fantastic view of everything T'Pol's body had to offer. She was almost babbling insistently in Vulcan.

"H-h-hal-tor, t-tor-ri!" She leaned her head in next to his jaw, nipping at it with her teeth, not hard, almost playfully but with a hint of irritation, "Hafau-la!"

"I'm just gettin' your food." He protested, feeling the surge in his groin paradoxically occurring in spite of his exhaustion and barely tamped-down irritation as he felt the sensation of her breast pressed into his back and legs clamped around his waist; the stimulant hadn't even kicked in yet.

She dropped off him and pressed her back against the cool of the wall panel while he set the plastic container on his desk and lifted the clam-shell lid.

"Trippuh!" She said to seemingly nobody, over emphasizing the ending p consonant sound with a pop of her lips.

"Why couldn't you be this adorable the whole damn time?" He mumbled to himself as he lifted the items from the covered lip-tray consisting of a covered bowl of saffron rice, multiple grilled or braised vegetables in vacuum sealed pouches, and sliced beef also vacuum sealed. It was premium fare as the standards of the ship went and at least part of him was convinced this was Nassir's doing. God bless him.

He was just about to begin arraying the food for her when he felt her hands going to the waist of his sweatpants and began pulling them down, clumsily.

"Hey now, I thought you were hungry!" Trip barked as he spun around to face her, divesting her grip of his pants.

"K'avon…aitlun…" She stopped a second, looking away, her lips pursed like she was thinking, but in a fashion that was decidedly more emotive than what he was accustomed to, "Riko-guv-aitlun-" the last part cut off into peels of giggles as she lunged in to finish pulling down the athletic pants to his ankles.

She dropped to her knees, looking at his groin, specifically at the state of limbo between flaccid and erect, quizzically, giving the organ a rather firm pat with her right hand, "Tonk-peh! Shen-tor!"

He grinned in spite of himself, stepping obligingly out of the pants pooled around his ankles as the environmental system cut on, sending cool air to bathe over the naked flesh of his legs, crotch, and buttocks. "Give it a sec."

Her hand shot up grabbing the organ tightly and eliciting a flinch from him. She seemed to perceive the discomfort and loosed her grip, giving it a few clumsy tugs until she began to feel the blood rushing into it, hardening the flesh in her hand.

"Tonk'peh!" She chirped in delight. She looked up at his face, her own flushed dark and covered in a thin sheen of sweat that matted her hair, eyes squeezed shut with a big smile showing the white of her teeth, "Nash-aitlun!"

And that was all he needed, he literally felt the blood displacing from any part of his body it could reasonable be considered in reserve and flooded to his groin and he stiffened further in her grip.

She made a little squawk of alarm that shifted into a delighted squeal, "Masuk'lok!"

He felt the blush happen, the swell of situationally ridiculous male pride, but felt he needed to play it off, "It's the same size it was the other twelve times!"

"Ma fa'nash-veh?" She inquired, seeming somehow surprised.

And now he was thoroughly turned on, something about the confusion but enthusiasm in her mind radiating to his exciting some desire to conquer the pristine. "Well let me show you and maybe you'll remember."

Yes!

Yes yes yes yes yes!

This was what he'd hoped pon-farr would be; an adventure for them, delving into their sexuality without reserve, being able to show and teach and learn. He loved T'Pol with all his heart and soul, but he was also intensely attracted to her on the basic physical level. Their sex often became more about their affection for one another than their enjoyment of each other's bodies. The physical release and contentment just a happy side effect of that most basic illustration of love, this was a chance for them to be completely free, to learn those vague things about what they liked the most, the way to do this or that that curled the toes more than anything else. Right now T'Pol was coming off like the eager virgin, wanting to dive into the exciting world of sex rather than tentatively skirt the edges.

But again, the voice in his head kept saying "this isn't how it's going to be, this isn't reality."

He started fixating on the dour thoughts, the fatalistic stab of reason that threatened everything he was feeling right now. He felt it ready to drain the tacit display of desire when a pair of lips tentatively pressed to it, snatching his attention the Vulcan on her knees in front of him and what the events of the last few minutes promised. And just like that…the doubt was gone.

He chuckled partially to himself, partially to T'Pol who seemed to believe the organ needed a good morning kiss after having woken up, "Darlin' I don't think we've got the time to get you acclimated on how to do that right."

She hadn't seemed to transition to the next logical step after kissing it, but seemed intent on continuing to do so when he hooked his hands under her arms and lifted her upright, tossing her up at the end of the lift to catch her under the legs and behind the shoulders to carry her back to the bed, tossing her back into place then dropping to his own knees on the floor, pulling her knees over his shoulders.

"I don't think you're wound up enough, we're gonna fix that."

* * *

><p>Nassir Al-Sistani stood, arms folded looking out over the CIC, his jaw working diligently at a piece of, allegedly, black cherry flavored chewing gum while delta shift went about their normal, boring, everyday tasks. There was a kind of tense malaise in their activities, a sure sign that this crew had been dialed in for far too long to even slip into the sort of torpor of boredom that usually set the pace for a normal cruise. It was hard to call some of them battle hardened as they didn't have that subtle horror sitting just behind their eye, but he could see the subtle clues in even the greenest of them. When the 1MC would kick up, General Quarters, the klaxon blaring, he could see in their hands, in their faces, in the hue of their skin; the nervousness wasn't even there anymore, there was no fear, no apprehension, just a kind of calm practiced border-line apathy. They were dialed in now, it was all routine, even the damage control teams would be standing with almost languid disinterest in preparation to react to any battle damage that may occur. He'd watched it happen, clad in their navy blue NWU, black body armor and helmets, pockets and LBE stuffed full of tools and patching material, wires and EPS shunts, and their expressions didn't show a hint of concern or fear. They knew their duty, knew their roles, knew what could be expected of their comrades and the rest of their crew when the guns ran out, ordnance was outbound and hostile fire was inbound.<p>

They were walking, talking, flying, sailing, eating, sleeping, and whatever other verbs he cared to add, asymmetric warfare. He loved this ship, loved its crew, loved the life more now than he probably ever had. The subtle twinge of his biological clock telling him it was time to find a nice Druze girl and start a family was drowned out and washed away by the thrill that tickled him every morning or night or whenever he rose for a shift and realized that he, _he_, was part of the very heart and soul of the single greatest technological accomplishment in human history.

From over at the communications and electronic warfare station Crewman Holtz lifted his head, "Sir, we are picking up EAM from little whiskey."

Nassir turned his head towards the station, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, "Let's hear it mister Holtz."

"Aye, sir."

The message began broadcasting over the speakers, the sounds flattened and somehow digital sounding as it was broadcast via the quantum ultra-high frequency utilized for faster-than-light flash traffic.

"…mike oscar lima three one one tango, time; three four four, authentication; bravo zulu. I say again, Skyking Skyking, do not answer, mike oscar lima three one one tango, time; three four four, authentication bravo zulu. I say again, Skyking Skyking, do not answer, mike oscar lima three one one tango, time; three four four, authentication bravo zulu. This is little whiskey, out."

Al-Sistani sent a concerned gaze over to Master Chief Glen who returned the look, "Mister Holtz, how many times did the message repeat?"

"Four, sir."

Glen whistled, a single long note, "Damn…"

Nassir shook his head slowly, he'd been privy to an EAM once, that had been back in 53 when a twelve boat group he'd been part of patrolling just outside the Delphic Expanse was sitting pending additional orders to charge in there. The official mandate was strategic strikes against heavy Xindi population centers. Five frigates total were part of the group with the rest as destroyer escorts back when he was still just XO of the _Detroit_, word was the standard Type 51 torpedoes had been outfitted with seventy megaton yield anti-matter warheads. He found out later that the order coincided with Task Force: Dragoon's retreat from the expanse having taken heavy damage in a series of large surface combatant actions, one of which had forced Task Force: Zouave to retreat two weeks earlier. Xindi naval power had been gutted by the time Dragoon had been forced to fall back, but the threat that they would mount a final desperate suicide attack with whatever spheres they had left had prompted MCS to authorize the use of strategic nuclear weapons against population centers if it became necessary to destroy the sustained viability of the Xindi as a racial conglomerate.

"Where do you think they're aiming that?" Glen asked, breaking the moments of silence that had followed his invocation.

"The De Guello." Nassir replied, "My former CO is on the Revenge, it's out there for the express purpose of glassing Qo'nos should it ever come to it."

"Gawwdayum." Glen muttered, "how much hate and discontent they have on that thing?"

Nassir shook his head slowly, some great religious dread coming over him as he thought of the ramifications of the _Revenge's _payload. "Every type fifty one on the boat is outfitted with a seventy mike tango, with an active reserve for each tube, think…ten tubes, eight missiles each, five point six gigatons of yield total."

"Think that's a go code?" Yeoman Gottlieb quietly wondered.

Nassir shrugged, not sure how else to react to the numbing sense of dread crawling through his body, "If it was I think they'd still be sending the order to make sure it gets through."

He paused, then shook his head again, eyebrows simulating a shrug, "It's probably just a drill, but it means there is someone still seriously thinking about it."

* * *

><p>Why wouldn't it work? Why wouldn't her body do what she wanted to, what it was supposed to? She was dry, her want was there, her willingness was there, but she couldn't seem to produce the necessary amount of fluid to facilitate the process. His reluctance was bothering her too; why wasn't he willing to just continue without the necessary lubrication, if she could abide by it, so could he. Who was this again? Some human? Some stranger? No…she knew him, the blue eyes flashed at her again.<p>

_Blue eyes…blue eyes, my blue eyes._

The hands clamped around her backside, lifting her up and away where she straddled him, the hands felt nice, squeezing slightly, strong, powerful, practiced, lighting up the nerves and sending a shiver of delight up her spine. Who was this again? Human…human! Where was her mate?

It spoke, she didn't understand a word of it, but the words echoed in her brain as well.

_Remain calm for a moment._

_Blue eyes? Where is my blue eyes?_

_Look at my eyes._

She froze, all the pleasure muted by the moment of soul quaking catharsis as she focused on the blue irises, the large pupils, seemingly ringed in almost glowingly bright white. All the cursory surface level pleasure slid away as she felt herself overwhelmed by a sort of soul submerging euphoria, tempered by threads of sadness. Trip, Trip was her mate, why would she betray that for the blue eyes? But the call of those eyes was stronger than any compulsion of the bond, and she found she could not help but surrender to them.

_Please, let me go to my mate, I need my mate._

_I am your mate._

_No, no, blue eyes, you are not my mate, I need my mate, I cannot forsake my mate._

_T'Pol…_

She focused on the lips, moving from the eyes to the lips that spoke the words she heard in her mind, focusing on Trip's face.

_I am blue eyes._

She started to shake her head but the hands clamped on either side of her face.

_Say my name._

_Blue eyes…_

_No…say my name, who am I?_

The eyes seemed to fade back and away, sinking back into the eyes of the human, the human…her mate, her Trip…but something there, in the eyes of her mate, the flecked glaucous that seemed to be ringed in the most intense indigo, staring at her, locking her in place, his lips moving in time with the voice in her head.

_Say my name, T'Pol._

_Trip!_

_Who am I?_

_Blue eyes._

_Put it together._ His hands would not release her head, the voice wouldn't release her mind, the eyes wouldn't release her soul, she was transfixed.

_Trip…k'diwa, my mate, my blue eyes._

_Is it all clear now?_ Hs hands relaxed, letting her free, _Do you understand it all now?_

_Yes._

_Good, now can you stop fighting me?_

_No, I want to bite you now._

And she did.

He flinched, then started to laugh, the things radiating from his mind a jumble of emotions that was too varied to even begin to catalogue and reconcile. The confusion, the unease seemed to flow away from her and all that was left was a need for fulfillment and comfort, the dull and chronic gnawing of the fever was now just a persistent need. She nuzzled into his chest in the same place she bit him, feeling the texture of his skin and the body hair on her face, his scent wafting into her nose and bringing back compulsion memories of exactly this sort of intimacy from the past. A churning in her stomach, different from the other churning stole her attention away.

"I am hungry." She declared sitting up from where she had straddled him.

His words were incomprehensible, the human tongue that for some reason she couldn't seem to understand, but in her mind she heard the words in her native language, _We have food, eat something._

"I want you to finish first, put it back in."

His next words seemed to register for her for some reason, "You're 'bout as dry as yer sense of humor right now."

She cursed her anatomy for not doing what it was meant to. She wanted it inside her, but for some reason her own anatomy wasn't about to facilitate the process. He brought her right hand to her mouth, running her fingers across her tongue for moisture and went to reach down, grabbing his organ and rubbed her slightly wetted fingers over it he made an exasperated sound, a kind of sharp exhale.

"Just a minute."

He rolled beneath her, reaching for the desk and producing a small bottle of clear liquid, popping the top on it and pouring some in his hand, he closed the cap and dropped it next to where he lay, reaching down with the hand and stroked himself a few times before sitting up and putting the hand between her legs, rubbing the outer folds then snaking a finger inside. She felt the shiver again, a kind of anticipatory pleasure that caused some reflexive twinge through her body more in anticipation of what it promised than the actual sensation itself. She latched onto his shoulders as the second finger slipped its way in and began methodically working at the tender tissue inside awakening some part of her anatomy that moments before hadn't been working and rewarding his efforts with the natural moisture her body had seemed unwilling to produce moments before.

"Put it back in." She whispered over the huffing of her breath.

"That's the first thing you've said in English since this started." He mused in counter to her imperative.

"Trip…stop fucking talking and do it." She ordered again between shuddering breaths as he played her with middle and ring finger, pushing her closer to that single bright point of climax that lingered somewhere in the distance.

She felt herself flipping over before she could even begin to react, her back landing on the spread arrayed haphazardly across the scratchy carpet of the room. She shifted, rising above her as his hips forced her knees apart and after a moment of rubbing against the inner fold she shoved the lubricant slicked organ back in her. And then he began to move…on top of her, inside of her, seemingly at once above, beneath, inside, and outside of her. Hard muscle and bone pressed against her flesh and hot blood engorged shaft burning against the walls of her core. It could have been seconds, it could have been hours; time was inconsequential as the fire between their conjoined legs burned away the fever just a little bit more. The feeling took over every nerve in her body as she felt this strange sort of tingling urgency starting where he had entered her, radiating up through his torso and down through her arms and legs out to the tips of fingers and toes where it seemed to touch the air and explode putting her back to arching and body to shaking as she desperately writhed confused as to whether she wanted it all to stop…or, more likely…to keep going.

* * *

><p><strong>[! Author's Note !]<strong>

**Just one more chapter and that'll be end of the smut biscuits for a while.**


	54. Chapter 54

Surat approached the quarters Valek had been in for the last few months during his stay as a guest of his father. More than once the Centurion had attempted to beg off, to leave the house and find more suitable quartering as he felt he had transitioned into the stage of imposition. He could understand his subordinate's discomfort in the situation; he did not want to be perceived as taking advantage of the situation, of purposefully milking the situation. Surat actually found the presence of his more trusted subordinate reassuring, someone he could talk to honestly, someone who knew what he had been through. Surat's father, had been reticent about letting the Centurion leave, and had offered to find quartering for him in the Capitol but had eventually managed to talk Valek out of it each time. In his capacity as house-guest, the Centurion was providing a wealth of information about the humans based on his observations during the fighting on Vulcan as well as during their time as a prisoner. Indeed, Valek had gained a startling understanding of the enemy and the bountiful stream of information he had been supplying was beginning to affect the course of policy for the empire.

Of course Takal was getting the better of it all too, in addition to being privy to the debriefings and information sessions, she was also sleeping with Valek. He had half expected that after a week or two she would have used him up and cast him aside, instead he found that she had been carrying on the liaison almost since he had arrived at the home of Demek's clan months ago. If she wasn't pregnant yet they were either being extremely cautious or it was some sort of miracle. Surat was certain that his father knew…it was even possible that Terelisa had told him but he gave no indication of the fact, seeming to grow progressively more and more fond of the Centurion the longer time progressed. It was possible the idea of Takal finally finding someone to settle down with and give him grandchildren overrode any indignity or apprehension about her fornicating with a man so far below her station. Then again, it could simply be that father was different. Despite his station, he still liked to work with his hand, taking weeks at a time to toil in the family vineyards and inspecting their factories and other major holdings himself; dirty, boot-clad, hand cracked, hair bleached, and skin burned tan by the sun. Father had always said it was what kept him rooted, grounded in reality; it let him remember the burdens of the people whom he helped govern. Mother encouraged the affectation, often spending whole seasons overseeing the vineyards, the harvest, and the making of the wine. Mother had taken pains to trace their family lines back, charting every descendent since their respective ancestors left Vulcan. She had always said that their status was because of work and effort, and that the humble origins of their clans were something to find pride and strength in.

Surat himself had never known want, his sister had never know anything but favor, and in this he sometimes felt a thread of guilt he could not ameliorate. To him, the only option to remedy this was to serve the people of the Empire, he chose to do so by the sword and his sister had by the pen. Still, he couldn't help but feel like Valek had some anchor to the humble roots of their people that he would never have, and he secretly envied him for that.

As he drew close to the small set of room Valek inhabited, he heard loud generated noise, following a prescribed rhythm that made it seem like music, but like nothing he had ever heard. He cracked the door, looking into the room to see the Centurion leaning back in the chair next the large wood desk in front of the large bay windows, eyes closed as a roughly filmed video played on the screen, it was where the music was coming from. The image on the screen seemed to show personnel from the Marine contingent at Joint-Base Wehytan, they were all off duty, some clad in short pants and short sleeved shirts, some in athletic pants, nothing truly uniform beyond the fact that none of them had hair longer than a few centimeters and they were all athletic, though some were obviously a good bit more burly than the others. Some had obvious tattoos, others did not, some were barefooted, others wore shoes, some held beverage cans and cups, some held sporting implements, while others held nothing. Valek nodded his head in time with the "music" such as it was, everything having a peculiarly metallic quality from the strange stringed instruments to the heavy use of cymbals on the percussion instruments. Surat looked closely, thinking he recognized the drummer.

"Was that corporal Barnes?"

Valek's eyes opened but he didn't budge, almost as if he'd known his commander had entered the room, "Yes, it is. Before we left I asked if there was any way I could get a recording of the music they performed, and they allowed me to record their performances with a digital video capture device."

Surat knitted his brows, rubbing a hand through the hair he was still presently debating whether or not he should allow to grow out to its original length. "When did you have time for that?"

"When we were designated trustees then given our parole I was tasked with emptying waste disposal bins in their billeting area, I feel I got to know them quite well during that time."

Surat sat on the tea table a few feet away, "You never mentioned that before."

"I wasn't sure how to broach the subject." Valek turned to look back at the screen as the group of humans playing the instruments all started shouting a chorus in gruff growling voices, a two three two three syllabic grouping they repeated twice. At the bottom of the screen the words were translated into Romulan script; "Bone, grave, bone engraved. Stone, grave, stone engraved. Bone, grave, bone engraved. Stone, grave, stone engraved."

The lead began again, his voice just as gruff and the words just as growled as was the chorus.

"I know what you've said in some of the briefings, but what did you really think of them?" Surat inquired, expecting that the answer would be even more revealing of the nature of his subordinate he now considered a friend.

"I miss them. I felt as though I came to know them, and they were not what we believed they were, what they seemed to be on Vulcan. These are good people, more like us than we would probably be willing to acknowledge."

Surat nodded slowly, his contact with the humans had always been rigidly ensconced in protocol. As the de-facto leader of the single strongest and most intact group of prisoners, he was accorded the privilege of being privy to the developments in the prison and their disposition by the command staff there. The humans were polite to him, respectful, maybe even courteous, but never friendly or personable. Maybe Valek's experience had been different as he came to know the human jailors as individuals and fellow soldiers. "Which is probably why we'll never be able to extend the hand of friendship to them."

Valek turned to look at his superior, "We can't go to war with them again, we won't survive."

Surat chuckled, "I am relatively certain we're never going to get sent to war again."

"I mean our people, we can't survive another war with the humans. The philosophy of their military is just such an example. Just about everyone we fought on Vulcan, all the Marines at the camp…they're not career soldiers, they will do a few years, four, eight, twelve…some of them will make a career of it, but most of them do their term of enlistment then go their own way." Valek explained, seemingly taken aback by the concept, "It hasn't even been four years since we invaded Vulcan, and already thirty three percent of the humans we faced have left active duty service and returned to civilian lives."

Surat furrowed his brown, "I'm not sure I grasp the significance of that."

Valek sighed slightly, trying to determine how to best contextualize what he had come to see as its importance, how it informed on the nature of the humans, "I suppose you can say it shows that they are not inherently militaristic despite their proficiency. They don't have a war economy, a war culture, or a war government. Their level of military preparedness is rooted in the hope they will never have to use it. They're not conquerors, they're not imperialists. Foes in the past have managed to waken them, to elicit their anger, but it quickly subsides. For them, war is in the DNA, something they do naturally, but they don't seek it."

"It seems a bit contradictory."

Valek nodded, "Which is probably what makes it more terrifying. Do you remember the human we saw at the main gates of their fort, the one with the black helmet and vest?"

Surat felt a haunted chill go up his back, "Yes, I do…"

"He was an engineer. His position in their military was to run the maintenance and operations sections of a starship, he was not a ground commander, he wasn't even a Marine. He, physically, jumped out of a starship in the high atmosphere to knock out our dampening fields to allow the Vulcan government to be beamed out. He then took command of the entire planet's defense when the commander of the Marine detachment was injured."

Surat's expression shifted to muted horror, "How do you know this?"

"Corporal Barnes…the large human guard D'Vor often spoke with…he was at Shi'kahr during our invasion."

Surat felt another chill go up his spine, "And they let him act as our guard?"

"He didn't hate us…we…we romulans…killed many of his comrades, he wore their names tattooed into his skin, but he didn't hate us, didn't despise us. I would even say he saw some of us as friends. He treated me like a person, like a fellow soldier, he was a good man and he wasn't even the exception. But how many of us do you think he killed?"

Surat shook his head slowly, "Beyond count…dozens…hundreds maybe."

"And in less than two years he could put it all behind him and be our guard? He stood there six days a standard week with that weapon and never once trained it on any of us, he learned our language, our habits, he saw us at our worst and never once raised a hand against us. But, given the order, he could kill without hesitation or qualm, how do we make war with an enemy that can eradicated whole-sale without even doing so out of hate?"

Surat shook his head, having a hard time wrapping his mind around it. Truth be told, he had started to hate the humans during the assault. They had lost so many to the garrison force that he had started to take a sick pleasure in the thought that they had managed to kill a few of their number even as the Romulan and Reman bodies had to be stacked like split wood. When he had been informed that the garrisoning force of humans on Vulcan had numbered fewer than 3000 and that between those humans and a few hundred Vulcan commandos twenty seven thousand Romulan and Reman soldiers had died before the relief force had arrived has shocked him into numbness. He couldn't hate after that, it was like a prey animal hating an apex predator; it simply didn't matter, each was fulfilling a role mandated by nature.

"How much of this have you discussed with my father?"

Valek swallowed, a grimace on his face as he looked away, "None of it."

"Why?"

"I did not believe it was prudent to let him know that I actually admire them."

Surat put a hand on his subordinates shoulder, "Valek…we can't help but admire them, if not for the same reasons."

"Some of them became my friends, sir." He admitted, "Regardless of what they were to us, or what we were to them, I can't help but feel there were a kinship there."

"Talk to my father, be candid about it, we have to approach them with this level of understanding."

"It is hard to be anything but analytical in the debriefings." Valek groused, "There are so many other ears there, beyond just your father and Terelisa."

"Does she know how you feel about them?" Surat inquired; his face with a dour, almost critical set.

"I haven't been terribly open with her about them."

Surat cocked a brow at his subordinate, "She hasn't been able to pry that from you?"

Valek knew where that was going, "We have other things to talk about in those situations."

The sub-commander chuckled, "I suppose you two would."

Valek arched his brows but said nothing further, prompting Surat to speak again, "What do you think will come of you two?"

"You sure are putting me on the spot." Valek protested with amusement.

"Don't think of me as her brother right now."

"I think…" He paused, considering his words, what they meant, what lens they gave into his feelings, "I think I love her."

"Think…?"

"She's not what I am used to, not what I ever imagined I would have from a woman. The thought that I would eventually start a family had always been there, but now I find myself in a situation that I am not sure which way to move forward with."

Surat wasn't sure if he should say what he was thinking, but his subordinate had a right to know, "She has been something of a man-eater in the past."

Valek nodded, "I picked up on that right away, she knew what she wanted too much to be inexperienced. But…"

"But what?"

He looked at his commander, right in the eye, "She has told me she loves me."

Surat stifled a bit of a wry grin, "That's a first."

Valek frowned, feeling his was somehow on the spot and he didn't like it one bit, "I'm way to far below her station, below your family's station to ever be a suitable husband for her. She doesn't have a choice but to use me up and throw me away and I'm one hundred percent at fault."

Surat bobbed his brows, folding his arms across his chest, "Our family has humble origins. We were farmers, laborers, we didn't begin as aristocrats, we clawed our way up to the top of Romulan society from the bottom. Three generations ago we were still nothing but people tied to the land, farming, producing. There's no dishonor in that, it's a noble role, a noble profession."

"But now you're a family with some of the greatest sway in the empire. How would it be suitable for a senator to wed herself to a lowly centurion?"

"One servant of the people marrying another; undeniable proof that we have remembered our history, our past, our true position relative to that of the citizenry, how could this be anything but fittingly Romulan?"

Valek shrugged, fighting a grin of his own at the validation it gave him, "That's one way to look at it."

Surat stood, "I want to you to speak with my father about this."

Valek almost came out his chair, "About Terelisa?"

The sub-commander almost laughed at the alarm on Valek's face, "No, not about that, you two can broach the subject to him once you get her pregnant or ask for her hand. I mean about the humans, I think he needs this perspective."

* * *

><p>"First contact…" Archer leaned back in the command couch, popping his knuckles as he did so, "and with a people that so little is known about."<p>

Erika smirked, "Don't let your enthusiasm show too much, Jon."

"It's a bit deal, they specifically requested contact. The way I hear it they're a race of recluses."

"Wouldn't be the first, "She countered, "a lot of private people out there."

Jon shrugged, "It's one thing when it's a people that are more or less planet locked, these people had dozens of worlds, but they don't trade with much of anyone, nobody contests their borders, they don't have diplomatic relations with just about anyone."

"It might be grounds for caution, sir." Malcolm declared, ever the alarmist.

"I don't think we have anything to worry about except making a good first impression." Archer declared, knitting his brows, "They were straight forward, let us know the approximate location just outside their border, gave us IFF transponder codes, scans of the entire area, validated our initial long range scans. If they wanted to set us up, they'd have tried to make sure we _didn't_ do our due diligence."

"I'd have felt a bit more comfortable if we knew more about them though." Hernandez added.

"They're reptilian, they're private, they have a rather blunt diplomatic style but it seems they grasp the core fundamentals of diplomacy. The language of the communique respectful but not florid and they provided extensive data about their language for purposes of the universal translators." Hoshi replied, her role as communications and electronic warfare officer meant he would be heavily involved in the process of facilitating the communications.

"Sir, I have detected their ship, three hundred fifty one thousand kilometers, eighteen degrees to starboard. Shields are powered, but I am detecting nothing indicating weapons are powered." Malcolm declared, eyes locked on his readouts.

"Can we get it up on long-range telescopy?" Archer inquired.

"Aye, sir, punching it up now."

The ship was long, and narrow, slab like with an angled nose and the engine module located in the back. It was utilitarian looking, lacking in stylistic flourish, but the plates and exposed components all looked precisely assembled, pristine and functional. It could be a warship or a freighter, it was impossible to tell. It was, however, possible to tell that it was quite large, about twice the size of _Enterprise_, but save for its relative size, it didn't look particularly belligerent.

"Sir, we are being hailed." Hoshi declared.

"Is there video?" Archer inquired.

"Not yet, sir, just audio and data."

Jon looked over to Erika then back to Sato, "Put it through, miss Sato."

"Aye, sir."

There was a crackle, and the screen showed a series of strange glyphs arranged around a central circle, almost reminding him of an old film synchronization clip as the glyphs changed indicating streaming text and a quadrant of the circle rotated around. There was a sound of growls, hisses, and almost roar-like sounds that made him think of a Crocodile or Alligator. The sounds abruptly changed to synthesized speech, "…-or synchronization occurs. Please stand-by while communicator synchronization occurs."

There was a pause.

"Synchronization successful, audio-video stream begins now."

The screen filled in with an image of two huge sauroid beings, long snouts full of sharp teeth, heavy ridges on their faces and skulls, small reptilian eyes facing partially forward indicating a species that had wide-angle stereoscopic vision. They were powerfully built, huge shoulders and powerful limbs and were garbed in simple toga-like clothing that bore a series of patterns that could indicated rank or station. The bridge was well lit, and simple, lacking ostentation but with a slightly yellowed glow from the lighting.

"Can we assume that we speak to Captain Jonathan Archer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, United Earth Nations' Military Command: Starfleet?" The creature on the right inquired.

Archer stood, moving to stand centered in front of the screen, "You assume correctly, I am Captain Archer, to whom do I have the privilege of speaking?"

The creature brought a clawed hand to its chest, "I am Colonel Krusth of the Gorn Hegemony cruiser Shir'thiss, I am tasked with providing transportation to Minister Thr'kiss for the purpose of opening initial dialogue between our peoples."

The hisses, clicks, and growls of the native language managed to filter through the sound of the universal translator's speech.

"It is our privilege to meet and speak with the minister, our initial contacts with the organs of your government that contacted ours recommended and exchange of representatives. As such I present my first officer, commander Erika Hernandez." Archer gestured back to his XO who rose from her seat.

"It will be my honor to participate in this cultural exchange." She intoned, feeling a few stabs of primal apprehension at the powerful looking reptiles.

The beastly officer raised his chin, showing his throat and the thick scales there, a sign that likely either meant confirmation or submission among their race, "How do you wish to conduct the transport of the representatives, Captain Archer? As a civilian, and per the initial communication with your government, we have tasked two individuals to provide for escort of our minister, do you have any objections to this?"

The tone of the universal translator was so even it was hard to grasp what mood the creature was exhibiting as their normal vocalizations sounded adequately intimidating.

"We cannot have objections to diplomatic discourse your people began in good faith, how would you prefer to conduct the exchange?" Archer replied with diplomatic aplomb.

"The minister is not positively disposed to molecular transportation and would, likely, find it agreeable if we were to dock to complete the exchange of persons for the duration of initial talks." The colonel replied, rubbing the back of one crooked clawed finger against his left cheek ridges.

Archer actually didn't have a problem with that, finding the idea of having actual contact with the ship during talks preferable as the Marine detail would have ready access to the ship if it turned out the Gorn weren't presenting at face value.

"That would be excellent, are there any other concessions we can make to facilitate the process?"

The creature turned to look off screen for a moment, then turned back, "If we could beam aboard our communications officer to ensure that all universal translator protocols are in place before the minister arrives, that would eliminate the time that would be wasted while proper synchronization occurs."

A good faith move to be sure, was it possible that duplicity was an alien concept to these people? "Certainly, we can provide you the coordinates to beam directly to the bridge."

The creature looked down a moment, "Do you have at least two hundred and eighty centimeters of ceiling clearance on your bridge?"

It was a strange question. "We do, right in the center where I am standing now."

"Very well." The creature made a hissing sound that the translator didn't catch and a matter stream appeared about four feet from where Archer stood.

When it finished materializing the creature was nearly seven feet tall and had to weigh nearly two hundred thirty kilograms. It wore the same kind of toga they had seen on the colonel with less ostentation and a pair of thick leather bracers covering most of the massive forearms. Its head darted around in a birdlike fashion as it took in its surroundings, then unclipped a rather plain looking cylindrical object from the belt it wore around the waist of the short half-shouldered jerkin.

It held up the device and made an almost chirping hiss, the device projected, "Please stand by for universal translator synchronization."

From where she sad Hoshi let out a throaty chopped growl, the sound ending in a pair of grunting sounds. The Gorn turned to look at her, its head cocking to the side then it began keying a series of keys on the cylinder with its claws. It then trilled back ending with a low rumbling growl. Hoshi in turn began pulling and swapping isolinear chips from the console in front of her and replied after a moment with a stretched hiss across her teeth.

The creature twisted the upper half of the cylinder an eighth turn, then depressed another key with its left thumb claw, this time what started as a hiss turned into language they could all understand, "..-chronization at sixty percent."

The mammoth reptilian pulled a box from the other side of the belt, swinging the device open on a hinge then examining the faintly glowing read out. The communicator began a split second after a growl started to roll from the creature's throat, "Please speak normally, this will speed synchronization."

"Welcome aboard the Enterprise."

The creature issued another series of growls, but the translator didn't pick them up as the sounds left its throat, through the low rumble they could make out three words, "Thank you, captain."

Hoshi couldn't suppress her delight at encountering another polyglot as a big grin stole the expression of quiet professionalism from her.

The creature spoke again as the communication device in its right claw blinked, "I am called spotted-egg, Captain Archer."

The vocal discipline to produce the sounds from vocal cords that were never intended to produce that kind of speech was amazing, and in this individual Archer saw Hoshi's obvious opposite number. "We're all pleased to make your acquaintance; we always look forward to meeting new peoples and learning about them."

The communication device beeped, "Synchronization complete."

"I apologize is I must continue to speak through this device captain, we lack the biological apparatus to speak your tongue without great effort."

Archer nodded with a smile, "We understand, there's probably nobody on the ship that could attempt to communicate with you in your native tongue save for our own miss Sato."

He nodded over to the communications officer, prompting the creature to turn to look at his counterpart, "Your ability to produce our speech is quite exceptional, miss Sato. I look forward to working with you."

Archer couldn't fight back the grin anymore, this was turning into textbook first contact, and with a species so entirely different from them. Even the Xindi reptilians had seemed more human than these Gorn did, it was fascinating to see a species so different from humans in so many ways yet somehow so similar.

"There is so little known about your people even from your immediate galactic neighbors that we couldn't resist the desire to meet you face to face after your communication to our government." Hernandez volunteered, taking a place next to Archer as the huge sauroid darted its head around, looking at everyone on the bridge in turn.

"We are, admittedly, not a terribly inquisitive people. Our way has always been to observe and rarely interact."

Archer nodded, the creature was candid but seemed polite, respectful, "Our hope is that after these next few days that might change."

The creature let out a screeching trill, loud and piercing that seemed to startle everyone on the bridge but Hoshi. The creature seemed to pick up on the alarm, "I apologize if my expression of mirth sounds alarming, we are not entirely accustomed with interacting with mammals of the primate variety, but I can say in this capacity that in the past we have avoided contact with other races deliberately, your people, though, are fascinating and we wish to learn more about you."

"So that was laughter, just now?" Archer inquired, his brown exhibiting a critical set.

"The sound I produced is what approximates that expression for your people."

"So that was a happy laugh and not a diabolical one, huh?" Archer posited with a wry grin, assuming that if the species could exhibit amusement, they might have a sense of humor.

"Our people do not laugh when angry, captain." Something about the way the thick skin and spines contorted around its eyes and the drawing back of the lip from his hind-teeth seemed to almost resemble a grin to Archer.

"I'll take note of that then." He smirked back to the creature, "Is there any preparations we need to make for the minister and the escorts?"

The creature produced a small slip of plastics and silicon, "Here is some general information regarding our species, but in the interest of facilitating the process, if I could please see the general clearance dimensions of the ship and inquire about your dietary requirements. I was told your people were omnivorous, is that a correct representation?"

"Some of us more than others." Archer replied about the latter, promoting another trilling screech.

"We are almost exclusively carnivorous, will this present a dietary issue for the traditional shared meals?" The creature asked, something about the soft eloquence of the translator seeming out of place given the size and intimidating appearance of the beast.

"That depends; do your people consume flesh raw or cooked?"

"Either is acceptable, we simply request that herbivorous faire not be supplied to the minister, we can consume vegetal matter, but it is not optimal."

Archer smiled again, "I think we won't have any problems in that regard. Now, miss Sato, mister Reed, if you could see about showing our guest around the ship so…" Archer paused, "I'm sorry, I'm not sure how to address you in terms of pronouns."

The creature nodded, immediately looking back and forth between Archer, Hernandez, and back to Sato, "I am a male."

"Right, if you can show him around the ship so he can relay the information."

Hoshi stood from her station and approached the creature, feeling quite puny as Reed descended from his station, and taking a position flanking the Gorn gestured to the turbolift, "If you will follow me, sir, we can show you our facilities."

Archer turned back to look fully at the view screen, "I apologize if my subordinate was unusually frank, Captain Archer, our protocols for making contact with another race are limited."

Jon waved it off with a smile, "As someone who has made first contact more than once, I have to say I really appreciate the straight-forward honesty."

The Gorn colonel lifted its chin again, exposing the throat, "We similarly value honesty."

"I am looking forward to a fruitful meeting, colonel." Archer replied.

* * *

><p>Erika settled into the weird nest-like bed surprised it would be so soft considering how big and tough the Gorn seemed. She had been shocked to find out that the males were actually smaller than the females, not that the males weren't large enough, but the females were big in a way no sentient being had a right to be. She suddenly understood why they had wanted to inspect facilities. The minister had towered over her guards, clearly weighting on the upper end of seven hundred pounds a muscle, scale, and bone. Even with her size, she had seemed somehow regal. Jon had insisted she go over first as a gesture of good faith and while she still had some apprehension she had not hesitated. The minister had been waiting at the other end with a detail of guards and the Gorn colonel commanding the ship. For all her size and spines, and claws, and teeth and scales…minister Krss'thiss had seemed so elegant in manner, gently taking her small human hands in her massive claws that were almost as big as Erika's chest and speaking in low hisses and rumbles that the translator worked into the kindest reassurances.<p>

"You must let me know if there is anything that can be done to make you more comfortable commander, these hostage exchanges of the diplomatic process are so boorish."

She spoke like royalty, like a matriarch, like some grande dame of ages past, and Erika could almost see her fitting into some eighteenth century royal court on Earth as well as she could in a low-budget caveman movie.

Most of the time she had spent, thus far, on the Gorn ship had been spent touring it with the Colonel as he showed and explained everything he could without seriously compromising their general operational security. They were blunt, but not disrespectful or rude, and to their credit they were contrite when excessively blunt which Erika actually found endearing about them. The meal she had shared with their captain had been a rather amazing affair. When they had asked about raw meat she had been initially apprehensive, not so much that they planned on eating her, as she was that perhaps they preferred to take their meat raw. This had been the opposite case though. She realized when she entered their mess hall that they had a truly ingenious environmental control system when she witnessed large sides of meat being roasted over actual fires. The creatures they cooked were large, the limbs bound back with wire or ties and almost resembling a pig except for the fact that the limbs were longer and the back and spine more arched, something like a buffalo but with the light colored flesh of something porcine. These were, in turn, slavered in sauce and the drip pan the juice and fat ran into was filled with what looked like onions and peppers. The thing she found interesting was how few were actually in the mess hall which had prompted the colonel to explain they only ate once every three to five days but at that time, the could consume up to one eighth their total body weight, mostly in meat with some root and leaf vegetables to facilitate thorough digestion.

Another thing that had surprised her more than anything was how clean everything was. She hadn't been surprised when she boarded to the ship that it was hot and humid, almost uncomfortably so and given their reptilian nature they had not seemed to think it strange at all when she unzipped her jumpsuit to the waist. Save for size, there was no sexual dimorphism between male and female Gorn as best as she could tell so they did not seem to register it from humans. Everything on the ship was pristine, clean, devoid of blemish. Their preferred lighting was in yellowy shades and they eschewed carpet, upholstery, where it existed, seemed to be of a leathery substance that was immune to the humidity, which, in its own right, was another testament to their environmental control system as water did not seem to condense anywhere despite the humidity approaching 80%. They were clearly a brilliant people, more so than one would expect to look at them. Their technology was solid, well developed, rudimentary where it needed to be and hiding its complexity. She had realized this when she noticed there was no visible lighting on the ship, rather they had underlays of light emitting diodes that actually served to light the very panels of the corridor. They used a holographic overlay that could be used to call up console interface on any surface on the ship if need be. It had not been visible from _Enterprise_, but the system actually placed name and rank designation glyphs directly on the slightly reflective patch of cloth on the shoulder of their jerkins for all to see.

The quarters she was currently occupying was clearly designed for a Gorn female, the ceiling topped out just shy of three and a half meters and the nest-bed seemed to be big enough to accommodate a car. The bathing facility had been a bit confusing at first; it was basically a water-fall that cut on once you placed yourself beneath it. The water had been rather cold, but it felt good compared to the hot room. It had taken a while but she had figured out the environmental controls for the room after bathing and currently had cool air blowing into the cavernous set of quarters. The nest was made of the same leathery substance which seemed to absorb moisture without getting soggy and didn't stick to her skin, which was a plus since she was currently lounging but nothing but a pair of bikini-bottom underwear and a towel around her shoulders and resting on her breasts. The room seemed to have dimmed as the embedded lighting registered she was lying down. She wanted to talk to Jon, maybe indulge in a little comm naughtiness and resolved herself to try to contact him. If she could figure out the environmental controls, surely she could devise the proper use for the comm interface, right? She had noticed that the Gorn always seemed to tap a small orange circle that seemed to be present on all surfaces to bring up the computer interface and rolling onto her stomach she saw one on the corner of a wall panel adjacent to the bed. Tapping it the holo-interface popped up, showing Gorn glyphs and the strange quadrilateral GUI. It blinked a moment, then the Gorn script was all replaced with Terran Standard English…the wording of some of the prompts was peculiar, but she was impressed by the effort and the way the system had seemed to recognize her as something other than Gorn. It took her a few minutes to adequately navigate the operating system and locate the protocol to connect her to _Enterprise_ but once she had connected, entered her access credentials and selected his quarters she was rewarded to see him sitting down in front of the console.

"Hey you!" she exalted as his eyes went wide.

"Uhhh…" He looked her over; shocked but liking the teasing eyeful he was getting as the ends of the towel draped suggestively in front of her breasts. "You look comfortable."

"Wanna see if you can sneak over and we can fool around?"

He frowned, "You are an unrepentant tease, you know that?"

She faux-frowned, then rolled on her back, "We could always give each other a show."

"And what if they record all outgoing transmissions?"

She smiled as she reached down, hooking her thumbs into the sides of her panties and lifting her hips pulled them down and off, "Then they'll already have a primer on human mating rituals for their records."

* * *

><p>She stared up at the ceiling, looking at the overlay of stars projected on the panels from the holographic projector arrayed next to Trip's personal computer console. She reflected idly that she hadn't put on a single piece of clothing in just over four days now, and while she thought it might be an interesting change from being naked as long as she had been, she still was experiencing enough skin sensitivity that she found being nude pleasant. Her faculties had more or less returned, even though she still found it difficult to conversing in English they were actually having conversations again, and Trip seemed to be able to slip into Vulcan without any issue when speaking in English started to throw her. By his own accounting of events she was sleeping more now, a fact that had seemed to be of some relief to her as he seemed to be quite sore from the previous three and a half days of protracted sexual encounters and her, apparent, willingness to harm him.<p>

She tried to not think about the last part, it was part of the process so to agonize over hurting her mate was illogical, what did bother her was she couldn't really remember it, beyond snatches of recollection of rage or indignation. She was more lucid now, but her compulsion control was limited and she realized she was still behaving in an animated fashion as was evidenced by the way she would launch into conversations that required her to sit up and gesture with her hands, speaking faster than she ever did and having to try to force herself not to speak Vulcan which she, invariably, failed at. She rolled onto her stomach, the cool sheets bringing momentarily relief to the hot skin and she felt her nipples perk at how good it felt in the moment. She rolled back to her back, having migrated most of the way across the bed in the process letting those cooled sheets work on her back and bottom. It felt similarly good, and she looked idly down her body to the obvious delineation of where garments covered her when sunbathing and she smiled to herself when she recalled how much those pale areas of flesh seemed to drive Trip wild. How long would he be away? The clock said he had left the quarters twenty minutes ago but right now it felt like hours as she felt the subtle temptation to reach down between her legs and begin attending to reawakened want that seemed centered there.

The phenomena of the Vulcan Love Slave fiction suddenly seemed to be so much more adequately contextualized now. Any other race that witnessed a female Vulcan in pon-farr would likely draw the conclusion that this was a race of borderline nymphomania tamped under rigid social custom and she had to seriously wonder now if given the proper partner and contact if this would not be the case. If Trip gave into his own sexual wants and allowed them to project, would she possibly always be in a state of sexual insatiability? It was mildly unfair, it struck her, that this was all exclusively on her schedule and his desire had to conform to hers. She wondered if, in the interest of fairness, if she would not, in the future, be able to transfer her fever, at least mentally, to him so that he might dictate the process and the course in which it occurred. She looked back at the stars, noting at least some of them appeared to be slightly out of place and she wondered if these were not old or obsolete charts.

She tried to located him in the bond, to get an idea where he was and what he was doing, but she was being blocked, which might be necessary as her thoughts tended towards the hypererotic the second she wasn't thinking about something else. It was peculiar but the mental barriers he had seemed to erect had their own sense of humor to them. She projected again just to hear it.

_Come back here, I want it._

_Trip Tucker is not available at this time, if you'd like to leave a message…too bad, because I haven't figured out precisely how that would work._

The door slip open and he stepped in, dropping a pile of firmware chips on his desk as he began unbuttoning the blouse jacket. He started whistling to himself, a few slow simple notes which would then drop off. He glanced over to her then back to the desk, "Somebody's heiny…is crowdin' my icebox.."

He whistled a few more notes and he folded the jacket and placed it over the chair at his desk and slipped his feet out of his boots. She could see the flush in his neck and ears, he was playing hard to get, or perhaps, was trying to fight off a physical desire that his battered body did not want to engage in. "Somebody's cold one, is givin' me chills…"

She sat up, reaching over to the bedside table to the bottle of water sitting there and opening it, drained the contents. He glanced back over as she rose to her knees, ready to climb off the bed and over to him, his eyes said something she couldn't quite figure, but there was a thread of physical lust there but before she could fully contact those eyes he looked back away, whistling a few more notes to himself, "Say it ain't so…your drug is a heart breaker."

The undershirt and pants came off next, followed by the socks, but rather than divesting himself of the boxer shorts he turned back to the desk, looking at the firmware chips, still whistling to himself. She saw as he turned away, the moment of profile, obvious tumescence which indicated he was at least at some level prepared for intercourse but his behavior didn't conform to this, so either he was playing a game or his biology was at war with his actual desire. He had complained that more than anything else, his erections had become painful from repeated and lengthy overuse. Last night he had joked that the amount of semen he had produced would be enough to account for actual physical weight loss at this point. So this was apparently a waiting game, a game to see who would act first, who would give first, who wouldn't be able to stifle the desire longest. Okay, fine, she could beat this game…and she could beat it by not playing, breaking the rules. She got off the bed, crossing over to where he sat, using a PADD to check program integrity on the chips, still whistling but seemingly a different song now. "Oh no, it go, it gone, bye bye. Who I, I think, I sink and I die."

She moved to straddle him, and he moved his arms clear to allow it, she sat down across his lap, feeling the tumescence pushing at her through the underwear, his expression was a strange mixture of acceptance, defeat, resignation, amusement, and maybe just a little confusion. "Yes'm?"

"Put a baby in me."

He grinned, his expression inches from a laugh at this point, "You think you don't already have one in you?"

"Be certain."


	55. Chapter 55

"So, Vulcan Rigel, and Andoria are throwing fits that we didn't consult them before engaging in diplomatic dialogue with the Gorn." Admiral Sanderson commented between swigs at the bottle of beer he held between his forefinger and thumb, doing his best not to grin.

"Ya snooze, ya lose." Black fired back as he rotated a cigar, lips pursed at the tip as e applied the lit match to the end.

Forrest was less amused, "Going unilateral doesn't set a very good example if we're planning on a federation."

"The Gorn contacted us, they wanted to talk to _us_, not Vulcan, not Andoria, nothing about the Rigellians or Telar or Coridinites…they wanted Earth and we gave them Earth." Sanderson shot back.

Black took a puff from the box-cut parejo, "Any idea how the initial talks are going?"

Forrest leaned back against the wall overlooking the bay, sun bathing the building as it started to dip into the pacific. "Archer has been out there for three days now, he's reported nothing beyond the proceedings being 'positive'."

"There's so little known about them that I was initially pretty damn worried." Black acknowledged, looking back from where he sat with his feet dangling over the edge of the balcony outside Gardner's office suite.

"There's a story about how about a century ago some Orion pirate king decided to raid their territory and was never seen or heard from again. Took ten ships in, nothing came back out." Sanderson ruminated, taking a sip from the beer, then lowering it again, "And that was the end of it, no Gorn expedition fleet came out trying to track down where they had come from, no declarations were issued, they just stayed as silent as they've always been and the galaxy was minus about seventeen hundred Orions."

Black nodded, puffed at the cigar, then nodded again, "I love stories with a happy ending."

Sanderson let out a hearty laugh at this, but Forrest seemed less than amused by the tale, or, perhaps, Black's reaction. "Did we even send out the first feeler about a diplomatic mission to our allies?"

The doors from the office to the Balcony opened and Gardner stopped, staring at the three other admirals, "What the hell are you doing on my terrace?"

Sanderson turned, "Eey! Look who it is!"

"Happy Birthday!" Black shouted as he turned and pelted Gardner with a cigar tube containing a parejo like the one he was smoking.

Gardner caught the falling container then moved to where Sanderson sat, holding out his hand, "Beer me."

Sanderson complied, handing a bottle to the other Admiral who made his way over to the edge of the balcony. "Not drinking Max?"

"He's pouting." Black answered.

Gardner frowned, or rather, frowned more, "What for?"

"He's vicariously pissed off for the Vulcans, Andorians, and Rigellians." The shorter man answered as he rolled the cigar between his fingers.

"Oh, no this shit again…" Gardner threw his hands up in exasperation, then popped open the beer bottle, "if the Gorn really wanted to talk to them, they'd have sent them an invite too. Seems to me they just want to know what foot they're on with us since we're projecting power all over the quadrant."

Sanderson shrugged, "That's what I thought."

"Hell, by the time Archer is done talking them up they'll probably want to meet with the others anyway. Way I figure it they've probably had access to everyone anyway and figured they weren't worth talking to."

Forrest pushed off the wall and walked over to where Black and Gardner were, "What do you mean?"

"Oldest charts we've gotten our hands on for this area of space have the Gorn Hegemony indicated. Those charts show their territory as pretty much exactly what it is now. They've been holding the same area of space for about the last five hundred years. They're there for the long haul, so if they wanted to play at diplomacy with anybody else they'd have done so by now." Gardner explained as he had been largely responsible for the mission to meet with their diplomats just inside their space. "Besides, if they want to play ball with us they're going to have to play with our friends anyway. Let the diplomats wring their hands over it and gripe, it's about the only thing they're good for anyway."

"I'm worried we've set our diplomacy back with our other allies by years, we didn't include them, didn't consult them, didn't ask their opinions or for input." Forrest declared.

"It means we're growing up…they're going to have to accept that sooner or later." Gardner replied, "If they can't make that step, then honestly, we don't need them. A kid eventually has to leave their parents' house, it's about time we did the same."

* * *

><p>Jon sat, looking at the desk in the cramped office off the bridge, specifically at the place he had always, mechanically, placed his mug of coffee. Day in, day out, for close on six years now, the laminate surface was indelibly marked in that spot now. It could no longer be buffed out or painted over or wiped away, it was permanent. The difference was the mark he had left on the ship would be torn out and tossed away, but the mark this ship left on him was never going to go away. Up to this moment, it felt as if it had been the culmination of his life; the single greatest thing he had ever done and would likely ever do. This was the final port of call for the ship, grown old through service, worn and torn at the edges, lived in, probably as alive now as any member of the crew, and in eighteen hours he would be leaving it for the last time in its life…hell…in his life. <em>Saxon<em> would not be _Enterprise_, like a hermit crab taking over a shell, the old being, the old life would be gone. In six hours they'd be pulling the eagles off his collar and pinning stars there, in six hours he'd make that step into the final lap of the race his career had been. In six hours he'd be Admiral Jonathan Archer, in six hours he'd be saying hello to his impending posting to CA-01…but all of that would mean saying goodbye to CGX-01 and there was a strange and distant sadness he felt because of it.

In saying goodbye to the ship he would also be saying goodbye to many of the faces that had come to be part of his life. Malcolm Reed had a pending reposting to the gunnery control command out of Utopia Planetia, Kelby was being poached by the _Tirpitz_ which at once filled him with slight consternation that Trip was, once again, taking a member of his crew, but there was a strange logic to it that he could accept, Hoshi was going to be staying as was Travis Mayweather, Anna Hess and Rostov would still be in Engineering with Hess moving up to division chief, Phlox was still trying to decide if he wanted to go back to San Francisco to the active think-tank of the Interspecies Medical Exchange or whether he wanted to stay on one of the boats, Hayes was being moved back to Coronado to work with the Naval Special Warfare training program. And of course…there was Erika. He wasn't sure what her future would be, where she would be going, what ship she'd be on or department of the Navy she would be going to.

He found he didn't want to consider what being separate from her would do at this point in his life, he'd grown so attached to her, so dependent on her, she had become a rock he could lash himself to when life was buffeting him at its hardest, and with her gone he was not sure how long he would be able to remain strong. Their relationship had taken a turn to the fiery ever since that night she had contacted him from the Gorn Cruiser five months prior. Sometimes he forgot how beautiful she was, how sexy she could be, but on top of all that he realized how she was far beyond just the best lay and best friend he'd ever had, she was part of what made him, him. Her unique brand of moral support had been what had led to the first talks with the Gorn being so successful.

In less than three days, they had managed to convince a species that had cloistered itself for close to seven hundred years to join, albeit in a limited capacity, their galactic neighbors. Even now an embassy was being built for the Gorn diplomatic mission to Earth, and to be fair, he had to place a lot of the credit for that squarely at Hernandez's feet, not just for her diplomatic acumen while acting as de facto hostage to the reptilian race but also for the way she built him up with the nightly calls she made to him on _Enterprise._

To hell with it…

There was no more use in ruminating, it was time to move forward. As he left the office he saw in the distance the LaGrange 2 construction yards where the _Royal Oak_ and _Missouri_ were being constructed, the long, low lines of the battleships striking a chord of emotional fervor in him. As a people, they were growing stronger, and these ships helped symbolize it. He was just about to look away as he saw the same long aggressive lines heading towards one of the open docking berths.

_Tirpitz_

He could see discoloration, indications of damage, slight to be certain, but a clear sign she had taken fire. She didn't seem to be so much limping into port as skulking, like some palpable edge of violence had seized upon the ship and it was as alive as its crew; all blood and fire and the direst of consequences. To look at is he couldn't help but marvel at Trip's genius at taking their design curve that far away and ahead of what had initially been their plans. Constitution was a fine looking ship, a marvel of engineering, but everything it did it did inefficiently and for show. The _Iowas_ took that performance curve, improved on it, and did it in a way that was unmistakable for anything but a warship. The specs and diagrams he'd seen for the _Revenge_ and _Triumph_ class cruisers invoked many of the same lines as the _Iowa_ but in a less martial looking form. They were regal as opposed to just intimidating, a king on his charger rather than long-lances riding high in the saddle ready to bear down on an enemy. They were every bit and Admiral's ship, as comfortable on missions of diplomacy as on missions of war. It was the best possible natural evolution of the CGX/CG design.

He marched over to the communications station and punched up _Tirpitz's_ hail and identification credentials and sent over a message on ULF.

"Tirpitz, Tirpitz, this is Enterprise, come back, over."

The voice that came in reply had the usual muted and flattened quality of ULF communication, "Enterprise, this is Tirpitz, we copy, send traffic."

"Tirpitz, this is Enterprise actual, request permission to come aboard."

There was a pause that Archer knew was the request being relayed to the officer of the watch who might, in turn, need to relay it to the CO or XO. The voice that came back was immediately recognizable. "Keepin' the light on for us?"

"You know how it is, dad has to wait until everyone gets home for the night."

There was a chuckle, a sound that ULF rendered into a series of stuttering pops, "Well shit, c'mon over then."

* * *

><p>The halls of <em>Tirpitz<em> were a bustle of activity as everyone seemed to be doing their best to secure their stations and gather their belongings in order to return dirtside now that they were in port for the long haul. It was possible they were finally going to get those final shake-down fixes put into place since they'd been sortied ahead of schedule this last time and hadn't been able to put back in for close to six months. It was hard to believe the ship was only a little over a year old at this point as the crew seemed to behave like they had been serving with one another for years. Of course, they had been thrust into the thick of it early on and clearly had been forced by dint of their duty to quickly adapt to being a full-fledged vanguard battleship.

He hadn't even gotten halfway to the turbolift when he saw Trip coming tromping in his direction. He looked haggard, worn out, beaten up, just generally put-through-the-ringer and Archer had to wonder what exactly he'd been up to the last five months. But he was grinning as he approached, not the forced kind either, his right hand cocked up and away from his body in anticipation as he drew closer. Jon reached his fellow captain and slapped his right hand into the waiting hand of Tucker.

"How the hell are ya', Jon!" Trip crowed.

"Mighty fine, mighty fine. What the hell did you get yourselves into?"

Trip grunted, the grin diminishing, "Orions and some Naussican raiders were goin' nuts out there for some God awful reason."

Archer arched a brow, "Really?"

"Yeah, they were hittin' anything and everything they could, sloppy, desperate like. We put down five of the larger _privateer_ groups 'fore we were called to put back in."

"So they were who dinged the paint or was that from…wherever you guys disappeared to?"

Archer watched Trip's expression turn painfully serious, "I can't talk about that Jon."

He suspected Trip was being coy, "Can't or won't?"

"Either, this is jisscog tier stuff." Trip replied in a low tone.

JSSCG meant one thing and one thing only, major concern to the strategic wellbeing of there are of the known galaxy as a whole. It was starting to seem like the universe was going mad, all the things that had happened in the last four years just seemed to indicate that something huge was brewing just on the horizon and he suddenly felt stabs of apprehension over whether this had not already been foreseen and was the primary reason for the accelerated timetable of modernization for the fleet.

"Bad news…"

Trip half frowned, "Tell me about it. Somethin' else is going on otherwise we wouldn't'a been recalled, they were gonna let us do a full year tour without finalization to get a better break-test idea for the second block boats but after the pirates started actin' up they decided somethin' bigger was brewin'."

"They calling you in for debrief?"

Trip nodded, "Day after t'morraw, which means I've actually got a bit a free time seein' as how I make sure all my reports are written in advance." He gave Archer's shoulder a bit of a jab, an obvious crack at how Jon never seemed to have all his paperwork done until they'd been in port for at least a week.

"We can't all be boring uninvolved captains, Trip." He fired back with a twinkle in his eye.

Tucker laughed long and hard, "Okay, you got me!"

"I'm betting you want to get home."

Trip shrugged, something Archer had counted on, "Actually, if you don' have anything goin' on I've gotta invitation from Black and Sanderson to grab a few drinks down in Frisco, wanna be my plus one?"

Archer shrugged, "Figured you'd be taking your XO."

"They're gonna meet with him separate, I get the feelin' they're 'bout ready to pin his eagle and give him a boat of his own again."

"When were you set to meet up?"

Trip shrugged this time, then folded his arms across his chest, "Three hours but nothin' says I can't start getting' one tied on now, 'sides, if I'm already two sheets to the wind before they show up I can beg off earlier."

Archer smirked, "Planning ahead, huh?"

"All those years as a engineer taught me a few things about bein' prepared."

* * *

><p>It was already a little past midnight when Trip materialized in front of the bungalow on Satellite Beach. He'd volunteered to be a guinea pig for the multi-hop site-to-site transport protocols that were being put into place only after he'd had a long talk with the transportation chief at Headquarters about the pattern-buffer redundancy to allow instantaneous recall if a hop went wrong. It was a three leg hop from San Francisco to Grand Forks, Grand Forks to NSW Crane Division in Indiana, Crane to Quantico, then finally Quantico to his house via a relay hop from Canaveral. He had spent about thirty seconds in the matter stream trying to convince himself of all the ways it <em>couldn't <em>go wrong and in his drunken state he had done a physical once-over once he'd materialized to make sure nothing was missing as immediately evident from a physical touch test.

After he was certain all the pasts of his head, hands, feet, arms, legs, and testicles were there he'd gone up to the porch, taking a second to breath in some salt air and make sure he wasn't wobbling too much before he opened the door. He knew Solan would be asleep, as would Teeth probably, but he wasn't sure about T'Pol and part of him wondered if he should have called ahead.

As he put the key in the door he projected a thought to her, _Hey, I'm home._

As the door opened he stepped in to see her standing in the hall, eyes wide with surprise and his own vision stuck for a minute on her surprised expression before following the line down to the partially swollen abdomen she carried.

"You're…" The words stuck in his throat.

"Why did you not contact us to tell us you were returning?"

"I thought I'd be surprised…" He bumbled, "I mean…I thought I'd let it be a surprise."

"I was about to get the gun."

He stared at her belly, "Why…? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought it would be best if I did not distract you with the news."

He dropped his seabag and walked over to her, dropping to a knee in front of the display of her pregnancy, looking at it and bringing his hands up to touch it, "I…"

He was at a loss for words.

"You are drunk." She admonished.

"I was until a few seconds ago." He quipped with a measure of bitterness but clearly to mesmerized by what her physical condition said, "How long?"

She sighed, "Since the basic series of events has seemed to elude you, five months."

"So when we…?"

"That would be the logical assumption barring it being another's child."

This brought his eyes back up to hers, a measure of confusion and worry there as the words seemed to reach his mind on an alcohol delayed timeline.

"Of course it is yours Trip." She was irritated that he would think otherwise, but also slightly amused by his reaction.

"Put a baby in me." He recalled.

She reached down to stroke his face, because he clearly needed the physical affirmation, "You succeeded admirably in that regard."

"Do we know what it is?" He asked, his voice tinged with wonder.

"If by we you mean to say the present company, then no as you are not currently aware, if by we you mean the collective family unit, then a portion of that unit is currently aware."

He frowned, "Why are you givin' me a hard time about this? Because I didn't call? Because I'm drunk?"

Fair point, she was being unnecessarily adversarial when it was not called for. A single lapse of courtesy on his part was not grounds for this level of confrontation. She could also grasp why he felt the need to prepare himself mentally for the return home after the events of the pon farr and the level of mistreatment he had experienced at her hands even after she became lucid. Once she returned to her senses she had once again become violent as he became the outlet for her frustration except now it was in a far more pointed fashion that during her outbursts caused by Trellium-D usage.

She placed her other hand on the side of his face, directing his gaze to hers, "We are going to have a daughter."

He made a silent gasp then shot to his feet, "Really? Really and truly?"

"Yes, she is currently in excellent health. I believe our agreement was if we had a daughter she would be named for your sister."

Trip's mouthed moved but seemed momentarily incapable of forming words, "I…uh…I thought you said if our first born was…"

"Since Solan is named for my father I believe it is only fair if we extend our original plan to this child."

Trip knelt again, kissing her abdomen and rubbing it cherishingly, "Do my folks know?"

T'Pol felt the initial waves of frustration begin to sink through her feet into the floor boards, her initial partially-inwardly-directed frustrations at her treatment of her mate had begun to manifest in a sort of resentment of him for providing an outlet to her anger. During the waning two days of the fever she had attacked him both physically and verbally about his liaisons prior to the development of their relationship. She grew angry that he would not in turn use her as an outlet for his frustration, the more she abused him the guiltier she felt, the guiltier she felt the more angry at him she got. The sex had gotten violent again but this time she was fully in control of her faculties as she tried to punish him at the same time she was seeking pleasure and biological fulfillment from him and his attempts to restrain her while simultaneously copulating made the event something that gnawed at the spirit of him. He felt guilt for raping-her-by-proxy while she was raping-him-by-proxy, and all the sensations of guilt were directed to him. He had been ashamed, had a hard time looking her in the eyes that final day before she left for the flight back to Earth. When he kissed her goodbye, he had not made eye contact.

"They are aware that I am pregnant, but they possess no further details as I believed it would be unfair for them to find out before you." She replied as she ran fingers through his hair, "You need a haircut."

She was surprised when she felt his arms wrap around her, pulling her closer into him as he kissed her abdomen again and stroked the small of her back, "What about your mom?"

It felt good, his touch was laden with affection, love, a bit of desire and the pressing of lips through the clothes were suddenly directed to her flesh and not to that being that resided there-in. This wasn't a kiss for his child-to-be, it was for her. "She has general information regarding the approximate time the conception occurred and the gender of the baby, but only in as much as it was needed for research purposes."

Her own hands were now roaming across his head, pulling at his hair and scalp, stroking his face, no longer merely affectionate.

"Let's celebrate." He muttered into her skin as he'd already undone three of the buttons of her top and was now letting his lips touch the bared flesh.

Her voice was pinched, labored by increased breathing, "Did you not already do that ahead of schedule?"

"I'm already drunk, which means all that's left is to hop in bed."

The same hormones that had been making here short-tempered were now screaming for the fulfillment of sex and her body prickled in anticipation of it, "I was certain you'd spent enough time in bed with me after the fever to not want to consider it for quite some time."

He'd already stood up and snaked a hand into her pajama pants by that point, rubbing at her through her undergarments, "Just don't try to choke me or go for my eyes this time."

She grabbed at the arm, trying to steady herself on it, but definitely not to stop it from doing was it was doing, "What about insulting you?"

"I could live without it, but if that's what it takes to get you off…"

She said nothing else, just grabbed his head and pulled his lips into hers.

* * *

><p>T'Pol awoke with a squeaking sigh as she stretched her limbs, suddenly so devoid of tension. The sheets to her right had been thrown to the side and she could still smell where her mate had been earlier. The softness of the cotton bed clothes tickled her naked flesh as she rolled from her side to her back and felt the cooled fluids Trip left inside her move. She arched a pleased brow, Trip was still in love with her, still wanted her, still felt a need for her even after he had seen the monster she could be. The sex had been vigorous, involved, thorough and had lasted until the early hours of the morning after he had spent himself in her twice. He had not neglected her pleasure either she reflected as her buttocks hit the wet spot she had left where her pleasure had culminated on one of several times during their love-making.<p>

From down the hall she heard Solan babbling something to his father occasionally prompting a yowl from the sehlat and laughter from her husband. Moments later she heard footfalls coming down the hallway; light and powerful at the same time heralding her mate's approach. When the door opened he was holding a tray in his hands, on it several plates, a mug, and glass of what could only be orange juice.

"Mornin' baby."

She stretched again, the sheets coming away from her breasts to rest upon her enlarged belly. She looked at his appraisingly, he wore a pair of athletic pants but no shirt and she eyed the musculature with a critical and pleased eye. "Perhaps you could stimulate my appetite."

He chuckled as he drew closer, sitting down at the edge of the bed adjacent to her, "With Solan just down the hall?"

"I am certain you could put on a children's program that would distract him just long enough to complete a pre-gustatory round of coitus." She reached up and pointed to his large right deltoid. "We also have the standard course of noise-suppression available to us."

He grinned, "How can you possibly still be horny?"

"It is either that or I can become hormonal and belligerent again."

He chuckled, "God forbid…"

She sat up, dropping the sheet from off her stomach, she still did not look excessively pregnant, but it was clear she was with child and something about her skin seemed to look all the more healthy as a result a fact she was keenly aware of as she felt the surge of sexual excitement go through his body. She sensed the compulsion from him, to push the door shut, to move the train to the dresser, to drop the athletic pants and get inside of her. But he fought it back for some reason.

"Tell 'ya what. Go ahead and get somethin' on your stomach and then we'll think about it. You're eatin' for two remember, and you've barely been eatin' enough for one."

She arched a brow, "How do you know that?"

"Cuz our boy tol' me so." He winked, Then leaned in to kiss her softly before leaning down to plant a quick peck on her left breast then belly. "Eat up, eggs, savas, toast n' juice."

He placed the tray over her lap and she looked down at the meticulously prepared breakfast. He had pan-seared pears and pla-savas, a pair of neatly fried eggs, and whole grain toast cut into meticulous isosceles triangles. The mug contained wu long green tea with honey and the glass of orange juice had a wedge of pineapple wedged on the brim sitting part way in the juice itself.

She arched a brow at her mate, "Are you attempting to woo me again, Trip? I was led to believe the level of effort dropped off once a man had secured a female's affections or sexual attentions."

He adjusted the waist of the athletic pants, setting them teasingly low on his hips, "Maybe I'm just tryin' t'get you all fired up so I can have my pon farr."

She felt his sexual urge become her own, as it seeped through the bond and set her skin on fire. "So I will need the energy as well."

"Yep."

"And what about Solan being just down the hall as you asserted?"

He winked at her, "He woke up at oh five fifteen when he realized I was home and I think he's about plum tuckered out and ready for a nap anyway."

She immediately detected the potential to make play on his words, "So he's tired of _you_ or just tired?"

He cocked a confused brow, "Huh?"

"_Tuckered_…out?"

"Oh…" He walked back over again, leaning in with a suggestive look in his eyes, "What about you? Aren't you Tuckered out?"

She cocked a defiant brow in return, "Take off your clothes and we shall find out."

* * *

><p>Kuhrd had been surprised when the first order he had received once they returned to communications range with Ganalda had been to head to Qo'nos. They had spent two months with the qarDaSgnan filling their holds with technology and trade goods while Duras attended conference after conference trying to begin an initial framework of trade and joint defense of the trade routes. They had been positively disposed towards the concept but had insisted on an exhaustively written framework that had to be ratified in their government before agreeing to begin sending and receiving ships. Duras, to his credit, had acquitted himself well and the qarDaSgnan praised him as honest, honorable, and frank, they had also given him the dubious honor of being called the most non-diplomatic diplomat they had ever met, which at first seemed like a couched insult except for the immense popularity it had garnered him among their elite. Indeed, there had been no end to the dinners and socials they had been obligated to attend. One of the first things Kuhrd was looking forward to was some <em>real<em> Klingon food after being wined and dined but what seemed to be the entirety of the qarDaSgnan military and political elite.

When they arrived above Qo'nos they had noted the increased number of ships above, the capitol was always busy but the sheer number of ships seemed to indicate a war footing or some great disaster had befallen their people. When he had beamed down Goral was already waiting for them. His demeanor was agitated and judging by the bustle of activity, there was something major occurring.

"What is going on?" Kuhrd led off, not giving time for the usual greetings between siblings.

"The Chancellor is dead, they attempted to assassinate him five months ago and he succumbed to his injuries last week."

Duras looked to Kuhrd with plain alarm on his face, "I must find my father."

Goral shook his head, "He is in session right now, the moderate factions are trying to prop him up for chancellorship to have a moderate voice on Qo'nos."

"Who is the opposition?" Kuhrd inquired, knowing that this was all pretext to war with the humans or at the very least, a renewed drive to annex new territory.

"No leader has materialized from their camp," Goral declared, clearly bristling with rage, "our Father and yours," he nodded to Duras, "think they want to find out who they have to run against before putting forth a candidate or candidates."

Duras knit his brows, "But why my father? Why not yours?"

Goral turned to face his future brother-in-law, taking the unexpected step of placing a hand on his left shoulder, "Your father is probably the wisest man in the Empire. He's shrewd but honest, clever but truthful. He can smell out the threats and the opportunities and given the necessity he could probably destroy any house foolish enough to come up against him."

Duras grunted at the assessment, it wasn't entire flattering, "The ideal Klingon."

"For leadership, yes he is. What good is a Chancellor who can't reign in the houses? Left to our own devices we'd eat each other." Goral insisted.

He had to respect the logic of that assessment, he wasn't sure if Goral was aping the word of Dhe'bekt or Lo'wahl, but the point was well made and valid. "We are a small house though, it will be hard for us to bring a sword to bear if need be."

"We will be your house's sword." Goral insisted, "There are four other houses with substantial military and financial strength as well, we can enforce the will of Chancellor Toral should it be willed so."

Krapt approached, and spoke up, his voice even and smooth as always, "Why are all the warships in orbit powered for battle?"

Goral's frown deepened, "When the assassination attempt occurred, a human warship we had not previously detected in the task group that patrols our boarder came out of hiding, its radiological payload was off the charts and it laid in a course for Qo'nos. Fifty parsecs out its turned around and retreated back to the task group."

Duras felt physically ill, "How large was the payload they were they carrying?"

"Probably enough to wipe all life off the planet if they had committed." Goral replied in a low haunted grumble.

Kuhrd stiffened, "The others will use this as pretext for war."

"How could they not?" Krapt inquired, doing little to hide his surprise at his brother's incredulity, "They stood ready to wipe our capital world, a large portion of our people, out entirely!"

"Would we not be willing to do the same if they had attacked us without provocation?" The elder brother snapped.

"If we had attacked them we would not have been content to merely corral them, they would have been wiped out or impressed to service." Krapt retorted.

"Precisely, and they deigned fit not to do so, I have no desire to test their forbearance and neither should you." Kuhrd snapped, pulling himself to his full height, staring down his younger sibling.

For the time being, the youngest brother was cowed, but Duras felt a strange sort of dread as he watched, for the first time, as the family dynamic between the Sons-of-Lo'wahl took on an air of hostility. It was peculiar and maybe a little frightening to watch a schism even in miniature take place in a family famed for its filial integrity. Part of him hoped this wasn't an example of what was to come and hoped even more that he wasn't the catalyst that began it.

* * *

><p>V'Karra could read the fear on Minister T'Pau even if nobody else would be able too. To be summoned to the hospital on the human Garrison could only be taken as a sign something had happened to Colonel Shelby. She would not have been operating under the premise that the Colonel was here seeking therapeutic options, in her mind it would only be a disaster and V'Karra realized that it would necessitate just this level of shock to get the minister to focus again on her responsibility vis-à-vis the stricken human. Her approach slowed when she saw the human doctor, as if she could stave off disaster by refusing to approach it, in not knowing, she could make it not so.<p>

The human spoke, "Minister T'Pau, I'm doctor Danvers, a neurologist. I learned that you are currently acting as executor for Colonel Shelby, I'd like to talk to you about his condition."

"Is the colonel ill, what is his condition?"

The human smiled, a sign that he either had not been on Vulcan long or simply did not care to affect Vulcan cultural mores when interacting with them, "The Colonel is fine, minister. However, I believe that the initial assessments regarding his loss of faculty were incorrect. Nurse V'Karra noticed that the Colonel still seemed to demonstrate and understanding of written and spoken information, but lacked the ability to effectively contextualize responses. He understands words, understands their meaning, and reacts accordingly, but he lacks the capacity to translate his own thoughts into written or spoken responses." The doctor explained.

T'Pau looked at V'Karra, "You noticed this?"

"I did, we spoke about it once approximately eight months ago." She replied evenly, knowing the recrimination was implied in the minister's words.

"In all our tests we found that the Colonel was capable of following complex directions both written and spoken and completed the tasks with a level of correctness and accuracy that would indicated full capacity to synthesize spoken and written information." The male human continued, gesturing as he did so. "What we did find, however, was when prompted to write an explanation about his method of task completion the parts of his brain involved with language output showed scattered neurological activity that corresponded to the damage in the Broca's region. The result is that his attempts to provide communication output show hyper-pronounced aphasia as would be expected with damage to that region of the brain."

T'Pau blinked, then found words of her own to address the revelation, seeming to suffer, momentarily, from her own form of aphasia, "Did colonel Shelby always possess the capacity to understand language post-injury or did the ability return gradually?"

"We can't determine that at this time, but based on his level of comprehension even where-in it involves complex direction sets and complex language I would have to assume any loss of capacity as the result of his injuries was marginal. Barring his inability to provide direct input his IQ scores were well within the accepted range of ability pre-injury." The doctor replied in what seemed to be a pleased tone.

Perhaps this was something of a coupe for humanity as it showed that their brains were far more robust than most had initially believed based on the Colonel's level of injury.

"May I see him?" T'Pau inquired, cutting her eyes over to V'Karra.

The doctor arched his brows, "I believe you should address that question to his primary health provider, Mrs. V'Karra has been, here to fore, responsible for all his health care decisions and brought this to our attention in the first place. I am merely providing additional diagnostic information at this time. If you will excuse me."

With that, the human walked away, his pristine white lab coat seeming somehow strangely out of place over desert issue camouflage and boots. When he had cleared the end of the hall and rounded the corner T'Pau spoke.

"I would have found it agreeable to have been consulted before you took this step."

V'Karra fixed the younger Vulcan with a critical glare, "You found it acceptable to completely overlook his existence for seven months prior; why was I to believe that you were willing to see to his mental well-being now?"

T'Pau did not visibly react but her eyes betrayed her where no other part of her body would, "Every concession I have put into place was with the colonel's well-being in mind."

"With the exception of providing him with familiar contact."

T'Pau did flinch at this, "My process of thought was compromised with the colonel and it was my impression that it would be better for me to remain aloof from him."

"For your own good, not his."The nurse fired back.

"It was my concern that barring his ability to properly process input that he would not know what to make of my attempts to interact with him." The minister countered, "I did not desire to provide additional stressors on his fragile mental state."

V'Karra shook her head, an unusually direct form of expression for a Vulcan her age, "The primary confusion in this situation was your own. You cannot or could not accept your attraction to the colonel and rather than properly process and analyze the logic of those reactions you retreated from them without the first acknowledgement of the process itself. I received no instruction or updates from you regarding your willingness or unwillingness to continue to interact with your charge and being unable to provide rational explanation for you absence I was able to watch the emotional confusion effect the colonel."

"An emotional reaction on his part was illogical."

"He is human, minister, they are _supposed_ to be emotional."

Silence overtook T'Pau, leaving her without a way to respond to that. Indeed, it was true, emotion was a core component of the human psyche and to deprive him of outlet for those emotions was cruel, perhaps crueler than anything else she could have done.

"I would like to see him." T'Pau finally said softly.

"You may do as you see fit, I seek immediate release from this position as I do now find the idea of watching his emotional and psychological decay proceed any further from neglect." V'Karra declared firmly.

T'Pau tried not to gape, "How will he react without your supervision and contact?"

"That is not my concern, minister. If I were to offer recommendation I would suggest him being returned to his own people where they will understand how to react to him and assist in his wellbeing. I will not preside over this man's death. Peace and long life, minister."

With that the elder Vulcan turned and left, some mote of logic in T'Pau told her that V'Karra had been right and that she would have to purge herself of her feelings for the colonel in order to be worthy as the individual responsible for his wellbeing. For now all that could done was to provide immediate oversight until a new caregiver could be located, and at the moment the only option that seemed rationale in the interstice was to quarter him in her apartments in Shi'kahr.

* * *

><p>Trip looked out the observation cupola of the LaGrange 1 dock three as worker-bees and EVA crews worked to free the nacelle pylons from the <em>U.S.S.<em> _Potemkin_. This ship wasn't even six years old and was already being gutted, a bizarre reverse cocooning that would allow the ship to emerge as the FFG-04 _U.S.S. Iroquois_ sometime within the next twenty four months. Two docks down, roughly five kilometers away, he could just make out the ribbing be put into place for another first, the saucer for the CA-01 _U.S.S. Enterprise_.

"I still can' believe y'all went and decided to pin stars to Jonathan Archer." He stated with a chuckle, eliciting a punch to his right arm from the man whom he had named.

Both Gardner and Nguyen chuckled as Tucker smirked at his former CO.

Tucker looked back out at the docks and shook his head slowly, "God, y'all must be burnin' through the appropriations like money is goin' out of style."

"That's isn't the half of it, Tucker. When they sortie you out to take over for De Guello, you're going to have the phase one hub for our first DSS in tow." Gardner declared.

"So our first Deep Space Station is gonna be right in the Klingon's front yard, I bet that's gonna go over big with the klinks." Tucker replied with a halting chuckle.

"It's going to give the task group a permanent port of call and facilitate coordination for the whole area." Nguyen offered, "It's going to give us at least another fifteen years of life on the Mississaugas and Ernest E. Evanses and it means we won't have to constantly sorties ships back and forth all the way from Sol."

Tucker nodded, "So how long as I'm gonna be sittin' out there with my ass hangin' out?"

"We're looking at seven months until Royal Oak has completed sea trials and they'll be putting in to relieve you on the line, then another two months at Kilo Seven." Gardner answered this time.

Trip sighed in response, "And I get to miss my daughter bein' born. Funny part is T'Pol is the one who talked me int'ah not resignin' my commission in the first place."

Archer turned to stare at his former engineer and 3IC, "T'Pol's pregnant?"

Trip grinned, "Yeah, five months."

Archer arched a brow, "But…Trip…you were at sea five months ago."

Tucker dropped his voice low, "We got medical dispensation because of her pon farr."

Gardner's expression grew severe, "And it'll probably be the last time that'll happen."

Tucker cut eyes over at the admiral, "I'll just make sure my commission is resigned before the next one."

Nguyen cut in before the exchange could get heated, "We'll just have to be more cautious with how we sortie next time."

Gardner took a few steps away, knowing his mouth was about to get him in trouble, not that he couldn't just court-martial Tucker if he stepped out of line, but that would also require he survive if the captain felt there had been a mortal slight against his Vulcan woman, a potential he wasn't exactly keen to take odds on. As he stepped away he saw Admiral Black on approach with Sanderson and General Lester. The trio approached Tucker, Archer, and Nguyen.

"Something else aren't they?" Black declared on approach.

"I was just sayin' how y'all had to be burnin' money like crazy on all this. And y'all are workin' on a Deep Space Station too."

Sanderson nodded with a smile, "Which reminds me…Jon, you and Enterprise are going to be acting as theatre command at K seven once it's done."

Archer smirked, "You think it's a good idea putting me out in a combat zone, sir?"

"We're putting Hernandez as chief of operations for K seven, so there won't be too much you can screw up." Black replied with a teasing edge to his voice.

Trip, used the fact both he and Archer had their backs presented to the others looking out the observation cupola to cut eyes over to the newly minted admiral. When he saw Archer look back he mouthed the words, _You and Erika?_

He bobbed his brows to emphasize the question element, Jon knew what it meant, he needed no further prompting and nodded then winked. Trip did his best to try to keep his face cracking open with a grin, he didn't do well enough.


	56. Chapter 56

T'Pol had come to expect knocks at the door to bring about pronounced surprises so when she heard the subtle wrapping of knuckles against the surface she was half tempted to feign not hearing it. She was, however, convinced that Trip's ears would detect the sound even over the rather pronounced volume of their son's animated discourse and the affirmation-laden yowls of the sehlat. And, should those sounds serve to drown out the knocking, anyone outside would doubtlessly hear enough coming from indoors to allay any belief that nobody was currently home. Part of her wondered who she would find at the door this time; Erika Hernandez, one of Black's cronies, her mother…

As she reached the door and opened it she stood momentarily dumbfounded to see Hoshi Sato and Erika Hernandez waiting there laden with a basket full of various contrition-by-proxy items one typically presented to someone who had taken a major life-altering step that the individuals presented the gift would not be able to adequately make themselves present for. Hoshi took one look at her abdomen and her eyes went wide.

"Yes, miss Sato, this is what a pregnant Vulcan looks like." T'Pol commented with her flat wry sense of humor that could almost be construed as rude by anyone who did not know her better.

"Oh my God…Jon wasn't lying." Erika replied in a slightly mystified tone.

"Come in, before the global tracking satellite detects you and sends further invites." T'Pol declared, sticking her head out the door and looking in both directions to verify there were not others approaching.

As the two stepped into the foyer the sehlat came tearing down the hallway only to plant its feet, skid to a halt, look at both human women then began a braying series of yowls. Hoshi froze in place, some ancient instinct that had caused her ancestors to fear large predators seizing control of her. Erika leaned forward, hands on her knees and looked at the smilidon, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's us…you remember me don't you?"

The creature lifted its head, yowling, bobbing its head from side to side with each utterance until Solan meandered into the foyer to see what kind of alarm the creature was putting up.

"What is it?" He complained to the creature then saw the two strange women and stopped, a little smile starting to crease his face and he let out a stifled mischievous giggle before turning on his heel to head back from whence he came.

The creature rutted forward, forelimbs stretched wide and in front of his head as his hind legs planted to spring, the tiny stump of a tail wiggling back and forth excitedly. T'Pol stared at the creature and lifted an admonishing finger, "That will be quite enough of that behavior."

The saber-tooth yowled a protest then rolling is head to the right plopped onto its side.

"Teeth, whacha yellin' about?" Trip intoned as he stopped in the foyer, with his son riding on his hip.

T'Pol looked back to her mate and shook her head, rolling her eyes, he was still only clad in a pair of athletic pants as had seem to become his defacto uniform around the house of late. He had been working on restoring some of the color to his skin after far too many months without the benefit of sunlight though part of her suspected it was being done mostly out of a desire to be more sexually attractive to her specifically as she found his skin quite appealing when tanned. The pants themselves he wore low on his hips and Solan was not doing anything to assist the waist band to sit at a judicious height.

The sehlat chuffed then yowled a few times at Trip as if the creature believed it could adequately convey ideas on the basis of the attention it had received at the hands of Charles Jr. and Solan when he vocalized.

Trip grinned, looking from the guests back to the pseudo-feline. "What's that buddy? Stranger danger? You better run quick cuz I think Hoshi might take'a bite outta you!"

"Nobody told me those things get _that_ big!" Sato exclaimed, her hands waving in short frantic bursts.

"How small did you expect it to remain?" T'Pol inquired as she arched a critical but amused brow.

"I don't know, I thought it was like some sort of miniature Vulcan bear-cat thing!"

The creature stood and approached Trip, lifting its head to sniff one of Solan's dangling feet and gave the adjacent leg a single lick before rubbing his large furry muzzle and cheek against Trip's leg then sauntered back towards the sunroom, clearly satisfied that the presence of the alpha male eliminated any potential threat that might come from interlopers.

Hoshi quickly regained her composure, prompting some ribbing from Hernandez, "Yet you didn't freak out at all when we met the Gorn…"

"They were too nice to eat us! I'm not sure about that!"

Erika laughed then took a good long appraising look at Trip, "Mmm mmm, a lean, mean, baby making machine."

T'Pol's eyebrows did the 'smirk' as she looked back at her mate then to the commander, "He does succeed in that capacity."

Hoshi seemed to suddenly remember why they were hear and fixed her eyes on Solan and squealed, "Oh my God, he's adorable!"

Solan feigned bashfulness, looking away to hide the smile that was forming on his face. Trip leaned his head back to look at his son, giving him a quick peck on the forehead, "Hey, c'mon buddy, dontcha wanna meet your aunt Hoshi?"

Solan turned his head to look back to his father, his expression bemused but with slight consternation, "Dadda, she not my aunt."

"Oh yeah? How do you know?"

He giggled at his father, pleased for the attention, "Becuz she's genikully dissimiwar."

Trip stifled the amused grin, trying not to laugh, it was such a patently Vulcan response but with a kind of human childlike bluntness. "Oh, is that right?"

The child nodded, "Uh huh."

Erika chuckled, and Hoshi spoke with clear mirth in her voice, "We can see how he takes after his mother."

"You know," Trip began, "before you were born, a long loooonngg time ago, your aunt Hoshi and uncle Malcolm and Travis took care of momma while I was away."

The child pulled his head back, cocking it to the side, looking in his father's eyes to validate the truth of it, then turned back to look at Hoshi. He then pushed away from Trip, prompting him to set the child down. He approached the pair of women on his tiny legs, still suffering from the innate clumsiness of a growing child and upon reaching Sato wrapped his arms around her upper legs and hugged her. Even T'Pol didn't seem totally immune to the sweetness of the act, as Hoshi let out a soft sob and Erika cooed at the child. It was such a perfect moment it ran dangerously close of upsetting the subtle balanced of wry cynicism of the Tucker house so T'Pol turned to her mate and cocking the usual brow declared, "Trip, it would likely be advisable if you were to don additional garments."

* * *

><p>"What possible outcome can be expected of a chancellor who would be forced to hide behind the back of the house of Lo'wahl in order to legitimize its decisions?"<p>

There were some grunts, a few of affirmation, others of derision, oddly enough the latter was mostly for the words of the speaker and not the subject. Toral was popular even in the camp of many of the war-targs for not only his cleverness but for the innate honor of his clan. Toral did not lie or cheat, there were many of his peers he could outthink, out-plan, out-strategize but he never did so via duplicity and always presented himself truthfully and without the varnish of unneeded diplomacy.

Another of the war-targ camp rose, "Let none speak ill of Toral or his house, he is an honorable Klingon, but in these times of adversity, with human military adventurism placing its blade to the throat of our women and children, we need a firmness of resolution he has not demonstrated. The time for words with the humans is over, the time for a fist is at hand."

There were roars of assent to this, it was the kind of language their race responded too, interesting more so in that there had never been an attempt at words with the humans, the fist had once been raised and having shattered against them recoiled to be nursed like one did a broken limb. Toral didn't open his mouth, didn't make a sound, he just wanted to listen to the rhetoric to try to devise the best way to impeach it. This was all noise and fury, but without substance and when it came time for him to retort his questions would be simple; how? How would they raise their fists to a people whom could not be defeated when they were weaker? Now that the humans seemed to be at the apex of their military readiness and strength, what could be done against them? The Romulans had felt the brunt of human militarism and all estimates were that it would take them over a hundred years to recover from it, but that wasn't entirely true, they had not borne the brunt, they had endured a very targeted small-scale military incursion that had still served to gut their military. If a handful of human warships could do that, what could be said of the rest of the human navy?

One of "his" camp rose, those that proposed restraint, a diplomatic approach, the utilization of their hegemonic base to create buffers against human indignity and a potential future abrogation when the reasons for their race's anger had been forgotten. If they could generate significant trade partnership with other races and groups and, via third parties, provide materials for the hungry war machine of humanity then they could make themselves indispensable and immune to the continued threat of human predation.

"A fist once raised cannot easily be turned into an open hand, an open hand, however can quickly become a fist, the entire disposition of the human aggression towards us is the result of failed policy on the part of a foolish minority of Klingons and the willingness of our people to support their acts of folly." He began, looking out over the assembly, "My clan is just as guilty. I scoffed when Toral insisted raiding human territory was a potentially disastrous course of action, and my clan and I personally suffered as the result when my house lost ships and men and I lost my own eldest son. If the events of our war against the humans years ago have taught us anything it should be that we can never underestimate a potential foe and the humans will respect restraint even if they do so cautiously. Our chancellor advocated restraint after our failures to take their colonies, and in eight years we did not endure a single attack from human forces even though they sat at our border with a fleet. The second our chancellor was murdered, they came prepared to finish a job they could have done after they beat us back into our own territory."

The same war-targ that advocated the way of the fist replied, "The fact they are aware of our political movements is problematic in its own way. The fact they know what happens in our territory and watch our political leaders means they hold influence over us. Why should we allow that? Must we concern ourselves over what Toral's personal beliefs may be? Must we submit our selections for leadership to the humans for approval first?"

Toral grunted to himself, he saw that his was at risk of becoming an issue revolving around him specifically and not the actual matter at hand, so he pulled himself to his feet as the chamber silenced, "My nomination should be of secondary concern here. The Chancellor, whom-so-ever he shall be, must follow the will of the Empire in as much as it does not harm the Empire. To that extent, the individual that is selected must weigh their own beliefs against that of the good of the Empire and the will of its people. Before the politics of the individual come into play, we must consider first the politics of our people and select a leader who best reflects them and has the wisdom to determine whether those politics would invite destruction either through action or inaction."

There were grunts of affirmation, mostly from his group but also from the undecided who hadn't aligned themselves to a faction and from some of those he knew to be honorable Klingons among the war-targs. Within a few seconds he began to hear the first set of hands and fists pounding affirmation on their tables as more joined in, voluntarily and out of perceived obligation, to the chorus of affirming coarse applause. Toral didn't smile to himself, wasn't even particularly pleased with the approval, he had not said it for approval, he had said it because it was true and it should be the criterion for the selection of the chancellor whom-so-ever it might turn out being. The sound built louder and louder until it became a thunderous din with bellows and howls of affirmation. Over the sound the leader of the house of Kurn, which was nominally in support of the war-targ's agenda, stood. "Do you, Toral vow to support the decisions of this council and its people if it be their will even if you do not personally agree with those decisions?"

Toral's expression was dire, "I will do everything in my power…as should any chancellor, to preserve our people and empire and I will always protest decisions I feel to be ill-advised for the well-being of either. That being said, it is the responsibility of a chancellor to fulfill that will, even should it cause us harm and then pray that we become wiser and stronger through the adversity."

* * *

><p>When she made the decision to pre-empt the series of events she felt were pending she had not expected the kind of result she had gotten. She was relatively sure that Trip was going to invite Archer over since Erika and Hoshi were present, so when she suggested the invited not only Jon but Travis, Malcolm, and a few other members of the <em>Enterprise's<em> officer staff she had been surprised that her spontaneity hadn't resulted in the slightest bit of disbelief from her mate. He was pleased by the idea, excited even and had co-opted Hernandez to perform the anticipatory grocer run to acquire that which they would need to host their former colleagues. When they had returned about an hour later they had acquired a truly prodigious amount of food, alcohol, and the associate supplies for a "cook out" that had left T'Pol to posit that this was sufficient should they entertain the idea of inviting the entirety of command at San Francisco and the entire security forces detachment for Cape Canaveral.

While they were gone, it had been her task to contact the individuals to whom they desired to extend an invitation while Ms. Sato did some initial preparation and Teeth had served as nanny to Solan. This, of course, had led to Solan running, effectively, rampant through the house intermittently giving chase to, being chased by, and riding upon the sehlat. The most interesting of the communications had been that with now-Admiral Archer who had seemed flustered and explained his situation as being "up to his eyeballs in paperwork". He had given consideration for a moment to the invitation, his mouth moving wordlessly as he mentally went over his scheduling and decided that he would, indeed, attend the social gathering. The others had placed less pre-condition on their outstanding obligations and had readily agreed to attend with Travis going as far as to say that he "wouldn't miss it for the world" which T'Pol found to be a rather unnecessary turn of phrase as ownership of Earth would, by definition, allow him to set priorities and amend them.

Trip had placed a single stipulation; that his parents not be invited, he was only interested in reconnecting with their former crew and did not want anyone present who had not been on _Enterprise_ during the heyday of her career as MCS' premiere missile cruiser. It would also serve as a kind of wake for the ship that had shaped so much of their lives in the relatively short period of time they had served on her. T'Pol had actually felt a strange stab of melancholy when she had found out that the ship had been decommissioned days earlier and she was certain that the subject would serve to promote a few morose moments of reflection among those that were to assemble at their house for the gathering. As a point of fact, her elevated hormone level had already served to promote a feeling of pronounced nostalgia in her and when she had acquired a glass of wine for herself Hoshi and Erika had almost come unglued.

"T'Pol, what are you doing? That'll hurt the baby!" Sato had voiced in the stead of her former commanding officer.

Trip had turned for a moment, then gone back to mixing up some sort of sauce having had the same conversation the day before when T'Pol had decided she wanted to know what drunk-sex was like on the intoxicated individual's end. "Vulcans process liquor differen'ly than we do, it's not harmful to the baby's physiology. She can get blind-drunk n' won't a bit'a it get t'the kiddo."

Hoshi looked surprised but Erika smirked, "Oh, how do you know that?"

"It is common knowledge among Vulcans and in order to validate the claim I became thoroughly intoxicated in order to prove the premise two nights prior." T'Pol supplied in that research-paperesque way she had when discussing things that were normal conversation topics among humans but not her people.

Erika's smirk grew a bit more pronounced, "So you two got drunk and fooled around, huh?"

T'Pol clamped her hands behind her back and blinked once while Trip's entire color grew a bit pinker, "Allegedly."

Hoshi giggled, and Erika laughed, "C'mon T'Pol, we have at least some idea what you two get up to, you're pregnant after all and I won at least six bets outstanding over whether or not Solan was _actually_ Trip's."

T'Pol took a sip from the wine glass, a rather sweet red that she found pleasant when not combined with a meal then spoke, "Were some of these outstanding bets originating from female members of Enterprise'screw?"

Hoshi let out a wry faux-chuckle, "There are still some of them that curse your name to this very day T'Pol, as far as they were concerned you hooked the best man in the known galaxy and they were jealous as hell about it."

Erika smirked again, "I still think it was sexual vanilla in action managing to put the moves on you."

T'Pol cocked a brow, "I seduced Trip, any other option takes the control squarely from me which is an option I will not entertain."

This produced another round of laughs from the two human women, before Hoshi spoke up again, "Okay Trip, no bullshit, when did you know you were in love with T'Pol?"

Trip turned around, an affected frown marring his expression, "The aspect of love never came into consideration, it was simply a logical pairing."

Those words hung in the kitchen for a moment like a weapon had just detonated and somehow been locked into a moment of stasis as the two human women tried to mentally reconcile the idea and whether or not it should, physically, floor them. T'Pol just cocked a brow at her mate, set down her wine glass, walked over and pinched his ribs, eliciting a grin and amused protesting "ow" before she went to her tip-toes to place a kiss on his jaw.

"I think I was in love with 'er the minute I saw 'er." Trip replied in earnest this time.

Hoshi was a bit startled by this revelation, knitting her brows and putting her fists on her hips, "Wait a second, if that's true then why were you fooling around with those other women all those years?"

Trip arched his brows in a defeated expression and pursed his lips, unsure what to say to that.

"All those alien girls, and the Krios princess…we all knew you were banging her, but you were in love with T'Pol all that time? What's wrong with you?!"

T'Pol looked up to her mate then back to the irate communications officer, "Trip, logically, concluded that as a Vulcan I would not reciprocate his emotions if revealed and the likelihood that I harbored anything but grudging respect for him was miniscule. Given those conclusions on the basis of typical Vulcan behavior to your people and our emotional restraint he had to conclude that his love was unrequited."

The wind seemed to leave Hoshi's sails and cocked her head to the side. "But that wasn't the case…?"

"I believe that conclusion is obvious. Even before I was aware of his many qualities I have to admit, he was pleasing to look at."

Trip folded his arms across his chest with an open-mouthed smirk, "What was that?"

T'Pol rolled her eyes with the smirk-brows, "I am saying I always found you _hot,_ k'diwa, even when I wanted to strangle you there was some aspect of my mental process that entertained it as a method of sexual activity."

Trip half-chuckled and dropped his arms, "Okay y'all, you're gonna have'ta excuse us a'while we go knock somethin' out real quick."

Erika laughed again and Hoshi joined in this time at the joke. From T'Pol's end she could only pick up on a series of compulsion emotions and thoughts from her mate she could not adequately synthesize into his intended course of action. Trip picked up on it before her expression even had time to change.

"It was a joke, darlin'."

Before anything else could be said the door-chime rang out and Teeth once again began yowling rhythmically as if to reinforce the fact that they had guests at the door in the off chance nobody else had managed to hear the sound. From outside they heard a voice dropped farcically low with affected gravelly tone declare, "Open up Tucker this is the police."

Trip began for the door, shouting back as he went, "You might wanna rethink that, Jon, this is Florida, people have been known to blow a cop right outta his boots."

T'Pol heard the door open and the unmistakable voice of Malcolm Reed declare, "They don't just do that in Florida, mate."

Erika led off leaving the kitchen to head to the foyer with T'Pol second in line and Hoshi bringing up the rear. Archer, Mayweather, Reed, Kelby, and Hess were filing in, just in time for the sehlat to come trotting into the foyer with Solan perched on his back. Malcolm and Travis stopped dead in their tracks, equally mesmerized by seeing the half-Vulcan child, the two hundred thirty pound smilidon he was riding on, and T'Pol clearly pregnant…again. She was beginning to wonder how often this exact reaction would play out. "Yes, I am pregnant. Five months to be precise. Yes, it is Trip's child. Yes, it was conceived by natural means. Yes, the child you see before you is our first born. No, the creature he is currently riding on will not eat you. With those potential questions resolved, might I suggest you all acquire an alcoholic beverage to allay your nerves."

* * *

><p>Lieutenant Pritchard looked over to where the Vulcan sat between himself and Major Musashibo as the CV-48B darted over the rocky scrub strewn dunes near SELF Butler at Twenty Nine Palms. The Vulcan was wearing the newest asymmetric concealment pattern camouflage that had just recently been authorized for special warfare combatant use along with a plate carrier and load bearing equipment and the new gyroscopically stabilized weapon retention rig that both Pritchard himself and Musashibo were wearing. On his head the Vulcan wore a desert pattern ball cap with a Velcro UEN flag patch and a morale patch on the back indicating his blood type to be "booze positive". If it weren't for his ears showing he would be completely unrecognizable as Vulcan since sunglasses obscured his eyebrows and he was working his jaw eagerly at a piece of chewing gum. The cap itself was striking as it showed clear signs of prolonged wear in obviously adverse conditions, as did his rifle which was the special operations Mod 2 version of the M-7 carbine. The paintjob on the weapon had been intended to provide desert camouflaging properties but was heavily chipped and dirt was embedded in the texture of the grip.<p>

Musashibo had seemed to know the Vulcan and Pritchard assumed it was likely the result of the Major's time as a company commander with MAC-V. In point of fact, very little about the man's demeanor seemed very Vulcan at all except for the part where his combat equipment was meticulous arranged and in a rather non-conventional fashion, everything within easy reach, magazines mostly arranged across the chest area of the plate carrier, pull ties ready in the back of his LBE, combat knife at mid-height on the left shoulder, side-arm suppressor to the left on the hip, side-arm on the right using a thigh-holster. Everything had a very broken-in quality that seemed to indicate he wore the equipment in the field on more than one occasion. Some of it looked to be influenced by Naval Special Warfare combat doctrine, but the rest just seemed to be off on its own tangent yet was somehow familiar and oddly practical. Pritchard took his attention away from the Vulcan and looked out to the east where indigo was starting to creep into the skyline off in the distance past the natural curvature of the earth. Above it sat a thick band of gray that could only be thunderheads and he could almost sweat he saw flickers of electric white indicating lightning.

The electric motors driving the massive props whined softly under the chopping noise of the blades beating the air as the rotors tilted upward to feather their approach, the sound change from the woosh woosh woosh of their approach signaling they were about to land. He looked back over to the Vulcan and Musashibo, the Major pulling back the charging handle on the weapon just far enough to flip open the dust-cover and check to make sure he had a round chambered. The alleged Vulcan pulled the charging handle to the rear and flipped off the safety on his own weapon. The gestures were practiced leading Pritchard to believe he was familiar with operating the M-12 weapons family.

Musashibo moved to the deck of the craft from the passenger couch and now had one leg hanging out of the craft, the Vulcan himself had taken a knee on the floor behind the major and had his weapon up, providing mock-overwatch for the point man. Pritchard, taking the cue, rose and grabbed onto one of the hand-straps on the ceiling of the special operations V-48 turning to watch the door on his side covering the port side of the craft while the other two would exit the starboard and he'd pull up slack position to engage their targets. As the craft feathered in a blast of sand and grit shot into the passenger/load compartment and before they craft had even settled Musashibo stepped down and out and began towards the AO with the Vulcan hot on his heels. Pritchard did the customary scan before turning to bolt out of the starboard opening while the other two had already begun to engage, the new stabilization rigs holding the rifles perfectly level while they advanced. The quick snaps of the standard issue rounds from the major's weapon were quickly eclipsed in volume by the barely suppressed pop and hissing snap of the rounds coming from the Vulcan's weapon signifying he was using special application heavy-weight rounds designed to drop hard-kill targets.

Pritchard himself found he had a hard time trying _not_ to compensate for his movement, he was used to the subtle movements necessary to keep his weapon's barrel and sight-picture level on a target while moving; the new stability platform eliminated the need for this movement entirely. Of course the fact he hadn't had much time to play with it prior to being tossed in the V-48 hadn't helped. He'd been busy trying to poach a new girlfriend and, possibly, future wife, from the Naval Special Warfare-hang-arounds at Coronado when Musashibo had told him to get his ass over to the Stumps for some fun. Clearly the Major's idea of fun and his did not exactly jive, or maybe it was just that he was too young to have completely bought in to the special operations community life-style.

After a few shots going wide of where he wanted them he began to intuit how to _not_ fight the rig and let it do its job. The metallic clinking of the bullets striking the metal plates behind the paper targets indicated that everyone was on target now with the major's weapon producing the cracking sound in triplets while the deeper pop of the Vulcan's carbine came in pairs.

"Reloading." Mushashibo declared, and Pritchard glanced over to see the Vulcan shift from his own targets to cover the Major's approach while the veteran Marine officer quickly switched out magazines. Pritchard noticed that the Vulcan already had a spare mag in his left hand, using the stabilization rig as the primary means of leveling the rifle with the hand holding the mag there to simply direct it between targets.

"Reloading." The Vulcan declared one the Major had snapped off his first round, quickly completing the mag change. Pritchard himself was firing single shots at a time, putting each round in the head of the paper outline target and, consequently, throwing a lot less down range and controlling his expenditure.

Whoever this show was for must have been important because there were seventy five total targets set up for them to engage at varying distances, elevations, and levels of concealment. Pritchard was relatively sure it was meant to show off the new stabilization rig and was meant to demonstrate its facility in the context of special operations mission types. He could definitely see its facility in the field, but in the capacity of the Marines on _Tirpitz_ it just represented another piece of equipment with little value for either boarding actions or, in the event it could actually happen, repelling enemy forces from the ship.

They were all advancing forward, clearing their respective avenues of fire quickly, and on the last target the Vulcan dropped the grip on his rifle which tilted forward in a slow relaxed motion as he quickly snatched his side-arm from the pull-release holster and dumped five rounds of sub-sonic 11.27mm center-mass on the paper.

"Weapons hold! The lane is cold." A voice shouted from behind.

Pritchard released his hold on the weapon which rotated downward, the stock pointing upwards as the articulated arm lowered to place the pistol-grip at the height of a low-ready hold. The Major did the same as the Vulcan snapped the safety into the on position on his M-52 Mod 0, and returned it to the holster.

As they turned they saw their audience; a four-star he didn't recognize, General Lester, Major General Scott Hambley, Colonel Trey Coolliedge from MARSOC Tasking Group, and some suit who was clearly with SID or some similar organ of the UEN government. The unknown four-star approached from the center up to the Vulcan with the suit at his left.

"What did you think, mister Suvak?" The General inquired.

The Vulcan bowed his head in a curt nod, approaching to take the extended hand, "General Tyner, sir, it is my privilege to meet you in person."

"Harris tells me you're the best gun-jockey we have in thirty one."

The Vulcan cocked an eyebrow, it arching above the line of the sunglasses, "I think Mister Harris confuses my longitudinal proficiency with tactical prowess."

The General cracked a half-grin, "Is that right?"

"I can walk and chew gum at the same time, sir." The Vulcan replied, a hint of mirth tugging at his cheeks.

The suit grinned and the four-star who Pritchard clearly recognized now as the mysterious and legendary General Melvin R. Tyner let out a loud belly laugh. "When Harris told me you were good I could see where that could be possible, but when he told me you had a sense of humor too I was about ready to call bullshit."

"It is all in the timing." The Vulcan replied.

The general chuckled again, then folded his arms across his chest, the sleeves of the MCUU rolled up showing the vestiges of a time-faded tattoo on his forearm, "So, how's putting together that team going?"

"There is almost too much talent to choose from. I still haven't been over to crane division, but I think I have a solid core group of candidates. It would, however, be of paramount benefit to the task if we could get a firm number on how big a team we need to assemble."

The General furrowed his brow and wrinkled his nose, "Explain."

"Initially there was talk of a eight man section, that number revised up to twelve, then to twenty, and as of last month there was talk of 'no fewer than thirty'. With that in mind it has required a broadening of applicant pool and a revision of criterion."

Tyner looked over to Harris then back to the Vulcan, "SID yanking your crank?"

"At this juncture I believe it would be more apt to say that tasking section is 'standing on our dick', sir." The Vulcan replied.

The General chuckled again, "Don't worry about compliance and tasking, you're going to be detached element, Mister Suvak."

The Vulcan cocked a brow again, "Is that to say this is going to be a jisscog detail?"

Tyner nodded, "Exactly, if you put together fifty guys, we'll make it fly, we've been banking the discretionary tasking budget since forty nine and we need an active presence, however many teams we can reasonably put together for our hot-spots with reaction teams to support. Overlapping areas of responsibility to work with, independent of, or supplement NSW. Thoughts?"

It was hard to say what emotion the Vulcan was experiencing, but his body language, such as it was, seemed to become a bit more energized. "I am agreeably disposed towards that possibility, sir. With that in mind, I will begin taking a slightly more liberal approach with my candidate pool." He turned his head to look at both the Major and Pritchard, himself. "I suppose I should inquire now if either of you gentlemen would be interested in a job."

Musashibo shook his head slowly, "I'm just fine staying a Marine, mister Suvak, but thanks for the offer."

Pritchard remained silent, not sure how this figured into his goals and plans for his career, but relatively certain he wasn't interested in being involved with some sort of JSSCG black ops machinations. "I'd have to think about it, sir."


	57. Chapter 57

Trip stood there waiting for the yard boss to say something, as it was the man was just kind of standing there staring forward vacantly. Something about what he'd said hadn't seemed to register, and considering the fact he had the orders in hand to back it up, he couldn't quire put a finger on what was eluding this man.

"Look, see these mission oriented modular sections all along the module section and sub-hulls three and four, you know, the big ass sections still covered in the fuckin' Tyvek that says 'mission oriented module connection point, do not remove until module installation'?"

He blinked back, saying nothing. Okay, Trip had seen this before, the guy was trying to figure out if he should brass off. It was a measure to try to determine just how much juice Trip had behind him, how much authority he possessed, just how far he'd put up with a know it all who was clearly out of his depth. The thing that struck him as confusing was how this guy had never heard of him, hell, he'd designed the thing in the first place! If there ever was a definitive authority it was him, he'd overseen the construction of the _Tirpitz_ down to the fasteners, having installed some of them himself. _Royal Oak_ and _Missouri_ were only different in as much as some of the tech he'd designed that wasn't available for the first Battleship was ready now.

"Okay look…see the brass…" he pointed to the O-6 Eagle, shield and sheaf device on his collar.

"…see the orders..." He lifted the PADD in his left hand bearing the revised orders from Admiral Gardner.

"…see the badge.." He pointed to the security badge clipped to the right breast pocket of his NWU blouse, it bore a mug-shot worthy image of himself, along with his name in the clipped military fashion of last name first, first name last, middle name…extra last. The boarder was edged in bright red with a large red block featuring big white letters reading "DESIGN LEAD".

"Now, with that out of the way, you're going tell your crews to hold off on puttin' in the storage and emergency billetin' modules in place for sections five, seven, nine, fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty three and twenty five port and starboard and puttin' in the light craft launch bays in the first six empty slot and heavy launch bays in the last two aft. You got it?"

The man didn't speak still, but he nodded which was more acknowledgement than Trip had managed to elicit from him than any other moment in this twenty minute discourse. Trip flipped the PADD forward for the foreman who took the device and headed towards the tasking and planning table. Trip turned back to look back out the observation copula to the ships. _Royal Oak_ was 96% completed, _Missouri_ was on the final 1% of internal optimization. She had another week of work at most, then about a month of system checks before her shake-down. He still hadn't seen who was getting these two boats, he could narrow it down a little. A.G. Robinson didn't seem like he was on anyone's candidate list for a command and he knew Jon was going to be getting the first _Triumph_ class boat, and he still hadn't seen gold letters for Nasir yet, but it had been hinted at that he would be getting one of the last block 2 boats.

He imagined by the time they were done with sea trials then a shake-down cruise one of them would be heading out to the old De-Güello theatre with God only knew what in tow now that the CGs that put in for the last time were being gutted for the _Iroquois_, _Saxon_, and _Tuvan_. Word was that the _De Güello_ would be putting in about a month after _Tirpitz_ made it out to the task group and would get an expedited strip-down to make block 1 for the _Saxon_ class as the FFG-03 _U.S.S. Kipchak_, which seemed to be a final thumbing of the nose at Robinson. The rumor was within eighteen months the _U.S.S. Revenge_ would be heading back for the final time and would be replaced within three years by the _U.S.S. Tengri_ which still hadn't been decided on which hull type would be used. All of it couldn't happen soon enough as far as he was concerned; something was going on and he'd seen it first-hand. The Klinks were clamping down in their territory and the border areas adjoining their space that were clear of MCS forces and the Orion and Nausican pirates were just rats fleeing the sinking ship. If some political force could unify them, they'd represent their own threat.

Damnit, he had to stop thinking about this kind of stuff. The revised timeline for _Tirpitz_ to be in port for refits had been extended to three months, this allowed the bulk component of the De Güello group to complete their twelve months at sea before putting back in to be replaced by _Tirptiz _and the six boats that had been sortied three months ago would stay in place until the second phase of the task group could be sortied. The TO&E still didn't reflect that _Tirpitz_ could pull warp nine, which meant she would more than out-pace her escorts which still ran at 7.5 unless an emergency called for them to punch up to 8.1, in fairness, though, he didn't expect for there to be an issue that would call for that timely a response by the escort as _Tirpitz_ could hold her own well until her backup arrived.

For God's sake, he'd only been back on planet six days and he was already more glued to the job at hand than his actual family. What were their names again? Lizzy Junior was just going to help nail it all home all the more. He'd _been_ there for Solan, had gone to the pre-natal check-ups and appointments, had been there for the birth, had held him in his own arms while he was still only minutes old. Seven days ago he hadn't even known T'Pol was pregnant and as much as it irked him that she didn't share the news it irked him more than he had been oblivious by dint of his duty. Little brassy teeth of doubt were gnawing at him, a part of him that wondered if maybe she hadn't been able to refrain from finding some other outlet to her need when the fever had first started, a part of him wondered if he hadn't met the need when she left the _Tirpitz_. Worried about this, worried about that, worried that maybe she had found some outlet for the months at a time he was away and she needed something to fulfill the residual want his so called "high sexual upkeep" had left her with. Worried that the fact he couldn't mentally connect with her to keep her plied with reassurances about his own sexual and emotional fidelity and left her to wonder if he had strayed. Worried that perhaps it was never what he thought it was and now, locked into a domesticated life she hadn't begun to wonder if this was not, perhaps, a mistake. Worried that maybe he didn't love her as much as he thought he did and she knew it. Worried…worried…worried to death by a bunch of little mouths chomping away at his confidence, his resolve, his sense of security.

What if Solan wasn't even his? It seemed absurd, Solan resembled him so much it couldn't be coincidence…or could it? Maybe he was barely adequate for her either physically or emotionally and in her logical mind she realized what she must say and do to allay his concerns about it. He stopped his mind, stilled it, silenced it, mentally lowering the concept of a wall he'd put around his brain, to keep her out, to keep his stress and doubts in, and part of him wondered…worried…she had been listening to the storm in his mind. She wouldn't know _what_ specifically he thought, but she would hear the furror, smell the doubt.

_Are you out there?_

What he perceived was a kind of dullness, like gray light early in the morning, like the smell of tepid air pre-dawn in summer. It was numb, but vacant of faculty, not shocked into wordlessness that left the presence palpable, it was an empty room without furniture and the light streaming in through a window to just help show off how much wasn't actually there. Was this what it would be like to be cut off? Had it all slipped and she'd just decided to cut him off entirely, to be done with it?

_T'Pol?_

There was almost a spark, a flash, a spark of realization flooding back to him, like the room suddenly turned outwards to a hallway full of pictures and end tables, like life was actually there.

_Trip?_

_Yeah, are you there?_

There was a pause, he could almost feel her mentally assessing, _I believe I had fallen asleep._

_Where are you?_

_On the deck, I was sun bathing but I believe I became too relaxed._

It was so normal, so frank, so…her; the her he knew he loved, the her he couldn't believe he would ever not trust. This was the T'Pol that could never leave him any doubt.

_Well don't stay out too long, you don't wanna burn._

_Where are you?_

_Work._

_That is insufficient information for the question as it was asked._

_Geez, getting' all Vulcan with me in your mind, thought we didn' do that._

_It will not be necessary as long as you do exactly what I want you to when I want you to do it._

He grinned to himself, so she was basically just like any other female after all. Part of him had to wonder if this wasn't just a mammalian thing or if all sentient females regardless of evolutionary origins were like that. _Alright, alright, I'm up at L One knockin' heads together._

_Take pictures._

_What…?_

There was a pause, and he thought he was sensing amusement, but more than that, he was sensing a kind of humored condescension. Oh, so she was being a smart ass…again…

_If you are beating individuals' heads together it will most certainly make for entertaining viewing material._

_You know what…._

_Yes, I do know what, and you will invariably attempt to devise some manner of punitive activity in response to my victory in the game of mental brinksmanship. This activity will almost certainly center around some sexual performance meant to make me seem ineffectual and pliable by leaving me thoroughly exhausted and so unbalanced by hormone release that you will be able to claim primacy. The error in judgment you are making is that this is not entirely by design, in which case you have still played perfectly into my hands._

Oh, so a challenge huh? The only way to win this game was not to play, and in the moment of bruised-ego frailty he decided up on his counter.

_Okay, fine…no sex at all then._

He, literally, felt her smirk. He knew it, beyond a shadow of a doubt; she was physically smirking right now. _Do you think you can persist in that course of action?_

_If we play by the right set'a rules._

_And what would those rules entail?_

_No insults, no inferences about sexual ability, no tryin' to make each other jealous, no physical teasing, no verbal teasing. If it's gonna be a test of willpower we can't use anything but latent sexiness._

_I fail to see how this constitutes a competition as you seem to be the only party interested in abstaining for the sake of ego._

He smirked this time, _Who's to say I won' try'n get you all fired up and leave you wantin'?_

_Very well, I agree to these terms, may the best Vulcan win._

So she thought she was already going to win this…that was fine, it meant she would approach it sloppily and he could counteract sloppy. This would turn into a game of maneuver and strategy and while the Vulcan mind was sharp and ever analytical, he had a supreme level of experience in all manner of strategic play in both love and war. If she thought she could counter his counter-manipulation, then she had another thing coming because he was already planning twelve moves ahead. Even with the thundering pulse of competition pounding in his head he couldn't help but think how fun it was all going to end up being and how much he looked forward to playing this little games in _their_ home.

_You know what…? I love you._

There was a pause and her mental reply lacked much of the edge of her earlier exchanges; in fact, there was something almost tender in it, _I know._

* * *

><p>Minister Kuvak could count this as his third time to walk upon Earth, a world of low gravity and high humidity compared to that which he was accustomed. It was temperate and green and water abounded and it seemed to be the only places that would or could remain unsettled by humans were those they chose to preserve or ignore. They had approached humanity with ignorance and part of him felt now that the years of contact with them had just served to further that ignorance, and at least part of him wondered if it was not a good thing. To understand something was to demystify it and sometimes to find the failings in it you did not want to know but above that you would, perhaps, find the failings in yourself. Today was just such a day, he found himself wondering whether or not his people were somehow lacking, if his people were somehow coming up short of what they could be. In one hundred years, humans had traveled almost as far as even the longest-range Vulcan explorations, they had surpassed the maximum speed capability of every known race they had encountered, they boasted one of the biggest warships in known space and more ships than just about any other two races combined with the possible exception of the Klingons, and they had engaged in diplomatic outreach with a people that had eschewed contact with every other neighbor they had.<p>

To think, it would all happen in his lifetime, to think it would happen since they had first met humans, since _he_ had first met humans. He still remembered, vividly, the day he stepped out of the _T'Plana-Hath_ on the tarmac at Grand Forks, Air Force Base. He still remembered listening to the human communications having no idea what they meant at the time but having been provided with a recording adjusted for language differences years later he had finally been able to revisit the events as they had occurred and come to understand the nature of the event as it had been seen through the eyes involved with it. When they had landed to make contact, they had been immediately surrounded by human security forces, armed to the teeth and knowing what he knew now about their military capability he had to be quietly thankful that they had exercised restraint.

If he were to be honest with himself, he found he wasn't particularly fond of humans as a group; they were loud, boisterous, a dichotomy of pride and self-effacement. They were bellicose, combative, not so quick to take offense but double quick in resolving it. They seemed to revel in conflict, in war, in death, so much so that their industry and policies and even entertainment seemed to be subsumed by it. It was, likely, also what had saved his life…had saved Vulcan. The walls of Camp Kelly still bore the scars of the assault that had taken place there. He could find few examples in human history and none in his own where so few had done so much against so many. There was a film, a documentary that had been done about what happened there made shortly after it happened. A human by the name of Igor Ygerev had directed the film and fifteen months ago it had premiered on Vulcan at the behest of some members of the High Command and some of the more influential instructors from the Vulcan Science Academy. The film had begun with an interview from Lieutenant General Paul Jackson. Jackson had said, "Some people view MCS as some kind of human empire, and that we didn't go to Vulcan to help them, but to conquer them. The thing is, throughout history when an empire as come and taken new lands, it has always been necessary for them to defend it and its people. So if we conquered Vulcan, laying down our lives for it and its people is the conqueror's obligation."

It was the final two words of this statement that had given the film its title. The interviews were all subtitled in Earth's Cyrillic alphabet, the written form of the Slavic languages spoken in some parts of Earth that had mostly eschewed joining the United Earth Nations. Some postulated that Ygerev was a UEN and MCS apologist who desired for his native people to cast their lot in with the UEN nations and join the 22nd Century in all its glory. Others, however, seemed to view him simply as a humanist who loved his race and wanted it to be seen for its true nature; that of sacrifice and charity even when it was coarse and violent, because both aspects were part of human nature.

The director had assembled footage in a way that did not spare the viewer the violence and horror of the siege of Shi'khar and the efforts of the MAC-V Marines to crush the Romulan aggression. Kuvak had found himself haunted by the scenes of unedited violence with the thundering orchestral and choral sounds of an old Russian patriotic hymn playing over the scenes of battle. The song was called Svyashchennaya Voyna which translated roughly to "The Sacred War" in Ygerev's native Russian tongue. The scenes of Human Marines fighting side by side with Vulcan Commandos to throw back wave after wave of Romulan and Reman Auxiliaries from the gates of the strong hold, then images of the same men, beaten, battered, bloodied, sitting side by side sharing a ration or cleaning weapons while being attended to by medics struck a chord in Kuvak so deep that he couldn't move past it. Some part of him, some vestige of his youth mourned the fact he had not been there to share that unique camaraderie that made Vulcan and Human brothers in war. Ancient remnants of the hot blood that had once punctuated his people wanted to have felt the sting and dread and eventual triumph those men had felt. He found he could not avoid thinking about what he had seen, in meditation, in sleep, in his quiet moments it gnawed at him.

In particular, the scenes that showed a single man in black helmet and body armor, standing in the thick of the fray, directing the fight, throwing himself into it, seeming to feed on the collective energy of it and returning it with such intensity weighed on him. That man was Commander Charles Anthony Tucker III of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_. The very man whose mate he had assisted Minister T'Pau in accosting at the same time he was fighting on the planet below, perhaps at the same time he had been commanding the defenses, not just of the garrison, but also of the thousands of Vulcans who had fled there when it became apparent that the Romulans could not breach its defenses. The same man who had ordered the evacuation of the civilians through the subterranean aqueduct system when it looked like they were finally going to be overrun. The man who had ordered and prepared himself to fight to the last time to make sure the Vulcan civilians would be able to escape. And the very man he would be meeting shortly on the central Asian steppe at Barun Urt.

Vulcan was beginning to mull the idea of providing material support to MCS for the production of its second generation warship. The hope was, that in doing so, Vulcan would be given more access and perhaps permitted more diplomatic attaches and observers on Earth's new fleet of ships, in time, perhaps there would even be crew exchanges. But today, he was going to witness what some of the rare-earth minerals Vulcan was contemplating providing would be used for. He was relatively sure it was weapons related, Barun Urt was one of the primary manufacturing locations for the large-bore rail guns being used on Earth's _Iowa_ class battleships. The exhibition would take place during the traditional Mongolian summer festival of Naadam which was made up of the three traditional Mongol sports of horse races, archer, and wrestling. His brief on the event had explained that the National Naadam had traditionally been held in the capital of Ulaanbaatar but this year the even had moved away from the centralized location to the South Eastern corner of the nation to celebrate and honor the industrial might of Barun Urt which was bringing increased jobs and prosperity into the country and seemingly rewarding the nation for its one hundred and thirty years as one of the stalwart if most overlooked of the UEN nations.

If nothing else this would provide an interesting window into how disparate and varied human culture was, how they had done so much to preserve their differences while fostering unity. It was just one of myriad examples of how seemingly-genetically predisposed humans were to being contradictory, and in a strange way, he almost looked forward to witnessing it.

* * *

><p>Trip barely had more than ten minutes to find a moment of calm before they were set to be remote routing site-to-site transported to Barun Urt via the U.S.S. <em>Edward H. O'Hare<em>. After the mental exchange with T'Pol he had been forced to look over a dozen other implementation concerns while mentally going over the speech he was going to give in Khalkha in a few hours. It didn't help that he'd never spoken Mongolian in his life beyond greetings and farewells during the production for _Tirpitz_. After he was transported back to his house in Florida, he'd had to quickly change out of his NWU, shower, and don his dress blues. T'Pol and Solan had, predictably, already been ready by the time he was finished putting on and squaring the uniform to muster. Solan had been a positive bundle of questions. Where they were going, if Teeth would be permitted to come with him, how long would they be there, was family going to be there? Trip realized this was probably going to be one of the first time Solan had away from home that did not entail a doctor's visit or trip to his parents' home. Part of him wondered if they had not excessively cloistered the child. The only other children he had ever interacted with were the small number of children that were at the Annapolis child care facility and his relatives on his side of the family.

He would be starting the first stages of his primary education within a few years and he wasn't entirely sure he'd even know how to react among human children his own age. He was more socialized on how to interact with adults than his peers and he could see how this could turn into a problem when the questions about "funny ears" and "talking funny" came up as they invariably would. What he did know of his son was that he had a supreme ability to internally and mentally process his negative emotions even when he became vocal about them. If anything, the fact that they would not be able to effectively get a rise out of Solan would be what would escalate matters to the point that problems could occur. Trip had always been much stronger than children his own age which had caused some problems when combined with his occasionally strong temper, but Solan didn't have any siblings yet and he probably had equivalent strength and if provoked to violence he would probably do so with some modicum of logic intact which would make him that much more dangerous to anyone in his peer group that had pushed him to the point that they required a lesson in superiority.

"We've gotta get him some kids his own age to play with."

T'Pol cocked a brow at this, "I do not see why that will be necessary, he seems very well socially acclimated."

"Yeah…t'us. He knows what t'do around adults but what's he gonna think when he's around some kids who are developmentally that far behind'im?"

She furrowed her brows contemplating, then looked back to him, "How would this constitute a problem, he will simply not interact with them."

Trip sighed, arching his brows at his mate, "That's usually not the best solution, darlin'. If he doe'n't find a spot in the peckin' order then they'll just actively ostracize 'im, and that can almost end up bein' worse than the over bullyin'."

"I do not understand why human children would engage in such primitively competitive behavior."

He smirked a bit at her, brows lifted in a show of amusement, "We're a primitive, competitive, species, baby."

She cocked a brow at him in return, "That is a valid point."

He leaned in to her, kissing her softly on the tip of her left ear then leaned back, "He took a nap earlier, right?"

"I encouraged him to rest twice today and performed neuro-pressure to relax him into a sleep state. His total time sleeping since he rose this morning came to five hours, twenty seven minutes." She replied.

"Good, its prob'ly gonna be close to oh one thirty before we get back home our time, and I don't want him gettin' dead-beat tired while we're there."

"What about _tuckered_ out, is that a possible adverse side-effect?" She arched a critical brow but he could sense she was being humorous.

"You can never have too much Tucker in ya'."

"Double entendre…point to me." She declared flatly.

Trip huffed at her, "Hold on now, nothin' 'bout points was ever mentioned."

"I have altered the rule set to provide for better tracking of this little competition. Complaining about the rule set is an immediate negative ten points, which puts me ahead by twenty six."

Trip stuck his tongue in the fold of his left cheek, "Okay, so where did the other fifteen points come from?"

"Gender norming." She replied succinctly then after a moment, "Ignorance regarding the rule set is another automatic five point deduction."

Trip let out a faux-chuckle that, contrary to the purpose of the sound, indicated his lack of amusement with the present interaction, he then leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Points aren't gonna matter a damn when you're climbin' the walls 'cause I won't put out, sugar bottom."

"Innuendo and personal direction of innuendo, thirty five point deduction." She declared as her cheeks took on a bit more bronzed shade.

"Okeydokey." He replied as he gave her another quick peck on the ear.

Now she was flustered, it was strange how he always managed to turn it back on her, but at least part of her assumed it was the result of the competitive nature of human interaction which, even at its friendliest, usually sought to establish some measure of dominance, "Have you memorized your speech?"

Trip began reciting words in Khalkha Mongolian, seeming to flow through the pronunciation easily.

T'Pol arched a brow appraisingly, "Given that I do not understand the language, I would assume you have done so quite well."

Trip shrugged, "Honestly, for all I know I'm givin' a weather report, someone else did the translation, I just had to memorize it."

T'Pol suddenly found herself curious about the extent to which human practical jokes could become vicious, "How trusted is the source of this translation?"

"It's Hoshi, so nothin' to worry about."

T'Pol's brows both arched at this, "Should I elucidate on how many practical jokes you played on her, for which, she never managed adequate retaliation?"

Trip's eyes went wide, the expression seeming to drain from his face only to be replaced moments later by a slowly spreading smile as he look right in T'Pol's face and mouthed the words; "Holy shit."

T'Pol did the "amused" brows at her mate, some sudden look of smugness changing her expression ever so slightly, a twitch of the cheeks a millimeter here, the drawing of the mouth wider a centimeter there, one additional subtle crease in her forehead from her arched brows. It was so minute that five years ago he wouldn't have even picked up on, but now, it was like reading a book. She also tended to draw out her elocution when she was hammering a point home like some errant railroad spike that refused to yield to its role at some ceremonial joining of lines from ages past. "Precisely."

* * *

><p>T'Pol was thankful for the warm sun baking down on them from the expanse of endless cool blue sky as the steppe winds washed over the warm field with just enough chill to remind them how cruel the winters of this place could be. The grasses seemed short, beaten down, oppressed by the very biome that birthed them, but defied their plight with an impossibly verdant green than seemed to run off into the ashy brown of the earth that run up into the low mountains, still dotted here and there with a recalcitrant scarf of snow. The land was strangely beautiful in its austerity, its unwillingness to yield to time or progress and remain as it always had been and always would be and in so being, mold its people whom seemed to be as part of it as the grass and mountains and big bright sky. Behind the stadium she had seen the sea of ger, all pale off-white and looking like small clouds in their own right; as if lumps of frozen water vapor had been shaped into small shallow-cone-topped lumps and bound with string with doors made the most impossibly vivid shade of red against the pale felt walls that held them. The smell of cook fires and shorn grass and turned earth filled her nose with a mixture of pungency and sweetness that just punctuated the odor of thousands of humans all at once in a single place; stinking, cloyed, clean, yet all mixed with a sort of impossible to describe perfume of unmitigated, unrepentant, unvarnished joy.<p>

This was what could be so mesmerizing and addictive about humanity, this culture that had changed little in over a thousand years had opened itself without reservation to out-clan and out-worlder. They all smiled at her, the genuine open faces fresh and young or old and weathered smiling and grinning wide nodding their heads in deference and offering her the pick of wares or trinkets that the translator dutifully explained as she strode through the ground outside the arena with Solan at her side and, at times, on her hip. The fanfare was unspectacular but somehow engaging as the nine yak tailed standard of the Mongol clans was brought into the stadium to the adulation of the Mongol people in the stands. Then in a short ceremony, a tenth yak tail was added, said to symbolize all the remaining tribes of the world, a gesture meant to show their oneness with the Mongol people. The shouts and applause only died down when the UEN flag was raised and a troupe of musicians using traditional instruments of Mongolia played Simple Gifts. The crowd stood silently with hands over their hearts while the song played and the troupe sung the words in the strange and piercing harmony of traditional throat singing. Next came the Mongolian national anthem and once it was done she watched as Trip ascended to the dais to speak. Behind him, behind the stand and away from the stadium sat the single most jarringly out of place technology she had seen since arriving in Barun Urt. On a wide, round concrete slab sat a long boxy apparatus, roughly twenty two meters in total length, she could the seams where the two pieces joined together and upon looking closer she realized that the composition of the box was the same as that used for hull plating on MCS warships.

Trip looked out over the crowd and spoke a short series of words. To her left the native translator spoke, "Children of the steppe."

Trip spoke again, and paused. Again the translator spoke, "Children of Chinggis."

Once again her mate spoke and now she could clearly identify the word for children, once again the translator supplied her a translation for the rest of it. "Children of the true khan of khans."

There were cheers from the audience. A single towering throng of shouts and whistles that quickly died down again as Trip brought up his arms and spoke once again, setting the crowd to roaring affirmations, hooting, whistling, clapping and yelling. The translator smiled a little as he spoke the words, "Today we…the whole world are Mongols."

T'Pol arched a brow slightly at her mate, wondering if he was, indeed, somewhere, somehow contemplating a career in politics. Once the crowd had calmed he began with the body of the speech, throughout the Mongolian translator supplied her with the words her mate spoke in English but a small nagging doubt had her look down surreptitiously to the Universal Translator she had brought with her just in case. There were a few instances where the device and the human conflicted slightly in exact interpretation but as best as she could tell, everything in the speech seemed to be functionally correct. He explained how Barun Urt had given the United Earth Nations the strongest weapons they had ever developed to date. How these symbolic bows from the steppes would continue to strike down foes across the stars, how they would take the spirit of the Mongol Warrior to the stars their forefathers had looked up to at night. He spoke of how Mongolian spirit and pride had set an example for the Allied Nations during the darkest days of the Eugenics War when they had stood virtually alone against the Augments. He extolled their spirit then, and their spirit now as they toiled to build the great machines that allowed humanity dominion in space.

The human term for what he was doing would be "laying it on thick", but in retrospect she could certainly see why this boost for the nations morale could be necessary and even desirable. Mongolia was not a wealthy country in people, resources, or expertise. The one thing they seemed to have in abundance was willpower and willingness and sometimes it was necessary and beneficial to leverage that and convince those that possessed it that they were important even if you could not quantifiably explain why they were so. From the reaction she was gauging from the crowd, Trip was doing admirably in that regard.

* * *

><p>Kuvak tried to pay attention to the speech, to the reactions it was eliciting from the people and to the significance of the words being spoken but he couldn't take his eyes away from her and the child with her. She was here, at this very event! He had to devise some way to escape before she could see him, could confront him. He had never made anything resembling an apology for his complicity in the assault on her mind by Minister T'Pau, and while the platitudes and apology of the young Minister had somehow rung hollow to even him when she had spoken them to T'Pol, she had at least made the attempt to do so. He, however, had not even made the first gesture towards contrition. And the child…the child!<p>

He gazed at the youth, at the strange mixture of human and Vulcan traits so uniquely distilled in the young boy. He could see the traits he took from his human father, in fact, most of his features seemed to borrow heavily from that lineage; the straw colored hair the blue eyes, the slight pinkness of the complexion. The nose, the mouth, the chin, they all were very human. But the narrow points of each ear and the slightly upward sweep of his brows identified him as Vulcan. But was he Vulcan? How did one decide? It could just as easily be said that he was human, but in point of fact he was neither and yet both. He sat relatively still except for his feet swinging back and forth as he watched his father speaking, clearly not understanding the words but something in his demeanor and expression indicating that he grasped the importance of the words. At times he looked out over the crowd, at these odd people who were all smiles and joy. It was strange, but as near as Minister Kuvak could ascertain these were a people of unreserved enthusiasm.

Kuvak assumed that at least part of this was thanks to MCS's insistence that this land provide the operating and production basis for its main-stay weaponry. Some conversations when members of the admiralty and functionaries of the United Earth Nations had explained that the UEN felt a profound debt to Mongolia for enduring predation on all sides from the Augments during the Eugenics was and the fact that Mongolia had never wavered in its loyalty even as it was accosted with no hope of relief from the Alliance of Nations during the darkest days of the global war. In point of fact, there were only seven Mongolians total serving in all of MCS and fewer than a hundred in the remainder of the United Earth Nations' various bureaucratic agencies. They took no subsidies from the UEN and demanded no assistance in developing their country either financially, technologically, or in terms of infrastructure. Still, they paid into the system by whatever means they could and did so happily.

Kuvak's translator paused a moment, taking a breath of surprise before finishing the translation of the next line. "Behold, children of Chinggis, the new arrow of the steppes that will pierce the sky and reach the stars."

The sound of servos and electric motors grabbed his attention as the large construction behind the dais began to raise, the long box lifting upwards at one end to reveal a bore and rows of segmented modules that could only be the acceleration magnets for a colossal rail gun. On the side, was a strange script he did not recognize, the markings running top to bottom along the side in neat rows. They were large, in a sort of burnt umber color, meticulously drawn out with clean edges eclipsing in size and prominence any of the Terran Standard English letters that provided safety instruction or part designation.

"Is that native Mongolian script?" Kuvak inquired of his translator.

"It is, it reads 'Tengri's breath'."

Kuvak arched a brow, "Tengri being the chief god of your native animism, correct?"

The translator nodded, "Yes, that is correct minister."

Below, in front of the dais, the ethnic musician troupe began playing on their simple stringed instruments and began chanting a song in the peculiar overtone singing he had never heard an analogue for in his life."

The weapon rotated away from the stadium as the barrel elevated skyward. He looked back over to where T'Pol sat with her child and saw as the youth covered his ears, a smile drawing his lips back from his teeth, eyes wide. T'Pol, herself, gently pressed her fingers to her ears as an audible buzz began to emanate from the location of the weapon. His own hands came up to his ears at the last possible moment as a deafening metallic bang rung out, friction flames leaping twenty meters from the bore as a streak of white shot up into the sky with such speed that the residual trail of white-hot energy seemed to trail for kilometers. It was so fast that the air seemed to rush away in a sudden gust as the momentary lance of heat and light and metal shot up past the clouds to disappear at the edge of space. Based on the speed at which the kilometers long trail disappeared from sight, Kuvak estimated the velocity of the projectile to be close to a hundred kilometers a second.

The crowd as one gasped at the sound and the rush of air, and the light and momentary heat, shocked into wordlessness as the sound echoed away off the mountains in the distance. Then the roar of cheers came that positively eclipsed the sound of the weapon firing. He looked back over to where T'Pol and her child sat, seeing them rise to their feet to join the human applause and Kuvak couldn't keep his eyes from going wide when he saw the subtle protrusion of her abdomen; she was pregnant…again.

* * *

><p>When the crowd finally quieted down, Trip continued with the last part of his speech, she was not paying as close attention now as she was to the weapon itself as she contemplated its power relative to what she knew of earlier MCS designs. She had remembered clearly the day he had begun drawing up the plans for it years ago while they were still on <em>Enterprise<em>. It was shortly before the first Xindi attack and he had been working on the design diligently alongside the dozens of other side projects he was constantly implementing and developing. It had been late one night, or rather, very early in the morning when she had entered the galley to acquire some tea from the liquids and drinks dispenser when she saw him sitting alone at a table with a stack of PADDs and a stylus completely absorbed in his work.

She had begun to experience a lingering fascination with him that she was convinced now was attraction, but at the time she hadn't considered that possibility and she still felt lingering stabs of what she realized, at the time, was jealousy, though she could not understand why, at his dalances with the Princess Kaitama of Krios. He was out of Uniform, in a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt both soaked through with sweat and she could detect the pungent scent from the time she had entered the Galley. The pattern of sweat on his clothes seemed to indicate he had been exercising vigorously moments before. She watched him a few moments then turned to leave when he looked up a second then turning his attention back to his work spoke.

"Mornin'…or evenin' guess it's kinda up in the air at this point."

She had been verbally engaged, and she found that some part of her was glad of the fact, she turned back towards him, "What activity are you currently engaged in?"

He tapped the stylus a few times on the PADD, "Well…"

He looked back up and leaned back in the chair, "I couldn' sleep so I was goin' for a run when it hit me, the idea for a three hun'erd fifty millimeter gun."

She walked over to the table he occupied, "Would engineering not have been a more logical place to work on such a design?"

"It's too noisy, 'sides I didn' wanna be around anybody else."

"Then I would venture that your quarters might have been a more optimal location."

"Not enough space to spread out'n work effeciently."

She half nodded, "Very well, I will take my leave then."

He cocked his head to the side a second, furrowing his brow, "I don' mind if'n you wanna stay."

Her pulse had quickened a little when he said that, "I understood your logic to be that you eschewed human contact to work on this project."

He half-smirked, "You're not human. Besides, you can be my walkin', talkin' check-sum. I know if I do somethin' stupid with the design you won't have any compunction 'bout tellin' me."

So here it was, all these years later, his proof of concept; magnificent and terrible at the same time, a weapon for the next, next generation of MCS starships and planetary defense, another in the long series of accomplishments of her mate. When she turned back to the speech, Trip was just wrapping up. The translator again supplied interpretation of his words, "So, with this, we can call an openning to the mid-summer games."

He half turned to step away then paused, he turned back and said something else into the mic that set the crowd to roaring with laughter. The translator paused, a hitch in his words, "…May all the honorable contestants compete well."

She looked down to her universal translator, its translation differed substantially, it read, "Just so you all know, everyone competing here today could fairly kick my ass."

She looked back to where her mate stood on the field, arching a brow expecting that she had found Hoshi's revenge in the translation but the slowly spreading smirk on his face seemed to indicate what was said was exactly as he had written it.


	58. Chapter 58

Koss was nervous, something he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he shouldn't be, not just because of his emotional suppression but also because he had no power to affect the course of action regardless of any personal desire to do so. Still, he was indeed nervous and he found physical activity seemed to be the only hedge against the building sense of tension. On the bench he had been seated, Dr. Sovik and Kov seemed completely impassive. Sovik was a good deal older than Koss and had perhaps learned to better process the tension and disappointment inherent in working with the High Command; the endless process of bureaucracy, the litany of legalized language, the mantra of cost-benefit analysis that ignored that benefits were not always readily apparent. Kov was rumored to be V'Tosh Katur but he often came off as simply lethargic in between manic bursts of energy. Koss had been working on this project for the better part of five years now and in all that time he had never once heard a thing about the progress of the planned station. This was the problem with their lifespan, their way of life…it was lethargic, slow, overly cautious. There was a human phrase; "nothing ventured, nothing gained." Without being willing to fail, one would never be able to progress. Part of him had been convinced that the attack on Vulcan would have spurred the high-command into action on the plans, it provided a fantastic impetus to begin orbital production yards to produce ships and to incentivize added defense to the planet.

Of course massive amounts of human expertise would be needed, which would necessitate and increased human presence on Vulcan, an idea some bristled at as humanity had remained relatively cloistered on Vulcan to their embassy and their military garrisons and this would require a large influx of civilian workers and advisors, but if that was what it required for Vulcan to become of paramount importance to what some where viewing as a growing human empire, then so be it. To Koss, the concept of human aggression was infinitely more intimidating than the idea of Romulan or Klingon aggression, and while he didn't expect it of the humans, it was far past the time that Vulcan stop testing their forbearance in terms of usefulness as an ally. For all extents and purposes Vulcan was worthless as an ally; human technology had outpaced them, human exploration had largely outpaced them, human applied sciences left theirs in their wake. The one thing Vulcan could supply was a strong, tireless, labor source and abundant natural resources for the production of ships. Better then to do so as a peer than as chattel. If this station could be approved, Vulcan could offer Earth another yard at which they could produce MCS ships, perhaps even begin integrating their own fleet with MCS and place Vulcans on human warships. From there the alliance could be codified in the form of a Federation as Rigelian, Tellarite, and Andorian observers began working as Cultural Attachés on MCS vessels, then eventually folding them into the larger framework.

Koss had been stunned and humbled by what he had seen of humanity's newest warships, the brain child of Charles Tucker had served to act as the high-water mark for starcraft for all of the surrounding space. When he had seen pictures of the next five ships in the series being worked on, he couldn't help but marvel at the level of human industriousness. Vulcan had to be part of that if it wasn't planning on making its own efforts to advance to meet it. On a more personal note, he had finalized the engagement process with T'Sil and they planned to wed upon the final disposition of the project being declared. He was quite fond of T'Sil, and she of him, which gave him no end of relief as this fondness could likely quickly bud into the sort of simpatico Vulcan husband and wife were supposed to exhibit.

"Koss, pacing accomplishes nothing beyond the unnecessary expenditure of energy." Sovik finally declared.

"Physical activity prevents excessive time to focus on the potential of refusal and the grounds on which the refusal will occur. It is more illogical to engage in second-guessing right now than it is to engage in functionless physical activity." Koss retorted in a slightly clipped tone.

Sovik didn't lift his head or open his eyes, "Very well." He stood, his arms still folded into his robes as he began a long slow first step as he began to pace himself.

Koss could see Kov was trying not to look amused from having seen humans attempt to suppress their own amusement and having witnessed T'Pol trying to suppress her rage.

After a few minutes of continued almost frantic pacing on his part and the slow laborious walk of Sovik the large vaulted doors of the conference chamber opened in the marble waiting area and some minor functionary stepped out. "The ministers are prepared to address you now."

Koss wasted no time marching for the door as Kov rose from his place on the bench and Sovik brought up the rear. Koss marveled at the size and illogical use of space in the room. The ceiling must have been ten meters high, and domed with sixteen large supporting pillars of square cut marble. In the center of the room sat a semi-circle tab le, the open end of the circumference facing the door with a large area in the middle raised a half meter where those seeking audience with the council would stand. Around the table there were low marble slabs meant to act as seating while behind a high raised counter sat the various members of the council facing the side of the table furthest from the door where the might look over the proceedings. Along the walls closer to the door a series of low marble pews ran in curved rows for any gallery or spectators might be permitted into the proceedings.

"Misters Koss and Kov and Doctor Sovik of the Vulcan Science Academy." The functionary declared.

From on high Koss could see some of the elderly Vulcan faces glowering at them, the frown that they always seemed to assume wasn't an expression of emotion despite it being a standard display of dissatisfaction in just about every other sentient species in known existence. Logic should be a calm and open face, one that was ready to accept whatever came and process it accordingly, not to scare it off before whatever in life could come would come. A few of the ministers seemed to affect looks of calm or just general disinterest, but the scowls tended to be predominate, or perhaps it was simply that they are what would immediately snatch one's attention. The first to speak was minister T'Pau, pulling his attention from the sour expressions to her seemingly out-of-place young face.

"Mister Koss, is it correct to say that you have been involved with the conceptual phase of this project for half a decade?"

Koss bowed his head in a nod, "That is correct, minister, I have been on this project for one thousand nine hundred twenty one days, including today in that figure."

"What conclusions have you reached in that time?" Minister Skel inquired, one of the ubiquitous sour-faces he had seen upon entry.

"That it is not only logistically possible for Vulcan to undertake the process of building extra-planetary mass construction facilities, but that it is also in our interests to do so." He replied.

"To what end, mister Koss? Vulcan lacks either the desire or the need for mass ship production. We are not a martial people that require a large warship fleet and our trade interests are limited." Another of the older dour ministers inquired.

"At this juncture in our history, it is both illogical and foolish to assume that our destiny as a people and culture is not thoroughly entwined with that of our neighbors and most specifically with humans." Koss posited.

"That does not answer the question, mister Koss, the matter of cultural integration is not at question here, what is the matter for debate is whether or not we need to be able to mass produce ships." The same dour minister inquired.

"Cultural integration is most certainly the issue at hand." Koss declared, sparking some murmurings from the other ministers. "The last decade has illustrated with startling clarity the degree to which certain factions are willing to engage in aggression. With that in mind, in order to certify our own safety and prosperity we must take steps to better assert our ability to attend to our mutual defense and trade."

"Would you posit, mister Koss," an old man who Koss recognized as Minister Kuvak began, "that humanity has been detrimental to the strategic state of this quadrant since their introduction to interstellar politics?"

"I would not, no."

More murmuring began around the room, but Kuvak paid no heed to it, "Would you be capable of explaining this belief?"

"The aggression to which you refer actually began approximately thirty years ago with the Xantoran Purity Front attacking a human freighter that came within seven hundred fifty million kilometers of their world in an area of space being contested by no fewer than three factions. When the Xantoran government at that time refused to indemnify the humans for loss of property and life in an area of space they were permitted by the legitimate government of Xantoras to cross, MCS blockaded the area to prevent further loss of life and ships. In this case, humanity responded when provoked. Nine years ago, five human held previously uncontested colonial worlds were attacked by a concerted Klingon military effort at either elimination or annexation. MCS responded in a series of expeditionary campaigns designed to push Klingon forces off the colony worlds. Later, MCS established a cordon outside Klingon territory to respond to additional acts of aggression by the Klingon Empire. Humanity, again, responded to provocation and attacks against their sovereign territory and property. Seven years ago, the Xindi attacked Earth without provocation using a weapon system designed to kill millions of humans. Earth responded by sending three expeditionary battle groups into Xindi space to eliminate the strategic threat without once attacking a Xindi civilian population despite the fact the Xindi attack was designed to strike population centers on Earth." Koss elaborated one point after the other, finally coming to his trump card, "Should I recollect the events of the Romulan invasion of Vulcan and its aftermath or is that still fresh enough in the minds of all assembled here?"

"So it is your assertion that human concerns in the immediate galactic community are inherently benign but they are capable of pronounced violent reaction when provoked?" Minister Skel inquired.

"Most animals will attack when injured and as far as it is within their capacity, will defend what they view as theirs." Koss replied.

"Is that to say humanity views Vulcan as theirs?" The words came from minister Tuvet, one of the oldest of the High Command.

"I do not believe so, no. I believe humanity views Vulcan as a friend and sibling world and is willing to engage in reactionary violence on our behalf." Koss answered.

"Can you further explain that concept for us?" Tuvet inquired, leaning forward against the high marble counter behind which they sat.

"Their cultures are replete with tails of one sibling engaging in defensive and offensive violence on the behalf of an accosted sibling. The defensive violence is, by design, intended to end the victimization of the accosted sibling and the subsequent offensive violence to ensure that such behavior on the part of the original attacker is not repeated. If there is any question regarding humanity's intentions, I feel they can best be answered by their actions following the break of the siege on Shi'kahr itself."

T'Pau spoke this time, "Please elaborate."

"The treaty that established Military Assistance Command, Vulcan, specifically stated as part of their so-called Status of Forces agreement, that any activity internal or external that threatened the sovereignty of the Vulcan state and people would result in command authority for the defense of the planet to fall to Military Command Starfleet if no indigenous governing body was present to attend to the planets defense and welfare. At the point that all signatory members agree that the hostilities had ended the command authority would be surrendered by MCS to the acting legitimate governing body of Vulcan." Koss explained, stopping when he believed the point had been well enough made.

"Yes, and?" Tuvet prompted.

"The official cessation of hostilities against the Romulans took place roughly thirteen months ago despite the fact that MCS relinquished military control of Vulcan thirty three days Romulan forces were pushed from Shi'kahr. In that period of time, humanity abrogated their own treaty status to grant us sovereignty we had effectively signed away in a war powers clause."

"This is all fascinating from a cultural and political perspective but what bearing does this have on the project as it is outlined?" Minister V'Lin finally inquired, clearly growing tired of the line of discourse extolling the virtues of humanity.

"There is an obvious need for more warships if MCS is to be able to project power through our immediate area of space. This force projection provides security for Vulcan, Rigel, Tellar, Andoria, and Terra. Joint Base Wehytan on Pon Mo-Karr has shown our ability to work cooperatively with humans and Andorians in common cause. It is time for an alliance between our worlds wherein the superior technology of humans will provide the best framework for exploration, trade, and military endeavor and if the alliance is to flourish it must grow quickly. In order to achieve that end we must have more ships and quickly, it is only logical that we do so where-in we have the capacity." Koss replied.

Several of the ministers turned slightly to look at minister Kuvak prompting him to speak, "This matches my appraisal of situation. When I left for the tour of Earth's production facilities it took a Vulcan ship nine days to reach Earth at our maximum warp. The return trip as a guest of the U.S.S. Independence took four days at their maximum speed. From this alone I believe it is possible to glean the level of which it is in our best interests to integrate our interstellar concerns with humanity's."

"Doctor Sovik, as the intended project manager, how sound are the plans for implementation as designed by mister Koss?" Minister T'Pau inquired.

"In my review of the plans and their practicality I can say, barring actual tests of physical proofs of concept, they are sound and easily implemented." The elder Vulcan from the Science Academy declared.

"Mister Kov, do we possess the work crews and expertise necessary to begin production should the project go forward?" Minister Tuvet asked this time.

"Without the slightest doubt, minister." The portly engineer replied.

The ministers looked to one another, with T'Pau extending her gaze to first a few on her left, then her right, there were nods of grey haired heads in response. "So let it be noted, the High Command approves the project for Vulcan Space Dock One. Election of the production board directorate will begin immediately, Doctor Sovik as acting project oversight chairman and Mister Kov as acting manufacturing director. We offer the gratitude of the Vulcan people, gentlemen, peace and long life."

As one the three men replied, "Live long and prosper."

* * *

><p>There was something so inexplicably wonderful about the natural sunlight that he almost didn't want to move from it. The soft heat bathing him felt so different to what he'd grown accustomed to that he wanted to savor every moment of it. There were things he could be doing, so many things that <em>needed<em> doing, but at this moment nothing felt more pressing, more important than soaking up every moment of Sol's grace he could. Solan's head was pillowed against his left arm where he had it above his head, fingers laced together against the back of his scalp while the little half-Vulcan dozed. It was already seventeen days into the refitting for _Tirpitz_, and he was relatively sure he could count the number of hours he'd _actually_ been home on fingers and toes. He'd taken the unusual step of filling out a leave form and slapped it himself on Gardner's desk. He was taking a week, hell, he should have taken a month, he had the leave accrued, but part of him just knew that if he took the step of requesting a judicious amount of time off they would assault him from every side with little issues that would require his attention. A week they could let slide, nothing could come up with they couldn't wait at most seven days on, but the concept of waiting thirty would induce panic and they'd be calling him the day after the issue arose.

And so this is how he would do it; take a week, put four days on, take another week, another four days on, then another week. It wasn't unusual for captains putting back in after rotating tours to take three weeks back to back to back at a time, so they could accord him the courtesy of seven days at a time. When _Royal Oak_ had slipped its moorings fifteen hours ago and three hours later completed its first jump out-system at warp 8.5 he'd gone right to the Transport pad at L1 and had them beam him home. Then he'd done the unprecedented and slept seven hours straight…the first time he'd done that since his early twenties. T'Pol refused to let him out of bed though, she told him to rest, to just enjoy his first day off in relative lethargy. T'Pol herself had been flitting around the house all morning, almost as if she was a leaf being carried on currents of air, a sort of reposed manic that made him things of string orchestras and nesting. She sort of radiated a calm bliss and when he would open her eyes her movements seemed graceful, almost like a hidden dance, disguised as everyday activities. She was radiating such contentment in the bond he found it just made him want to close his eyes and nap the day away feeling the threads of happiness she projected from herself and by proxy for their offspring.

He opened his eyes again for a moment when he heard the unique padding thump of Teeth sauntering into the room, his weight meaning that it was hard for him to remain silent on the hard-wood floors despite his natural adaptation to move quietly until ready to spring. The sehlat approached Trip's side of the bed and looked at him with a mournful pleading expression, wanting to join them on the bed but knowing there was some sort of prohibition against it.

_Hey, can Teeth get on the bed with us?_

He saw her float past the room, looking in, stopping for a second to contemplate then moved on, _It is acceptable, but if he makes a habit of it or comes to be an expectation, you will have to break him of it._

He looked down to the creature, "C'mon buddy." He pat the bed and the creature crossed around to the other side before bounding up onto the mattress, crossing to place himself at the feet of Solan and rolling onto his own side placing his big heavy head against Trip's shin. Solan stirred a moment, opening his eyes and looking down at the sehlat just to have heavy lidded eyes drift back shut. Trip freed his right hand from behind his head, reached across his body to his left arm and mussed Solan's hair, prompting the child to lazily lift a hand to push his hair back into place before letting it flop back at his side and took a deep huffing breath before letting out a set of breathy pseudo-snores. Moments later T'Pol re-entered the room, crossing to the bed and lay down on it next to Solan, propping herself up against the pillows and headboard, looking down at the child and gently began running her fingers through his hair. Once again his tiny hand come up, readjusting the stray locks then fell back to his side.

Trip grinned a little, "He really hates it when anybody but Teeth is messin' with his hair." He said quietly.

He unlocked his left hand from behind his head, bringing his upper arm to traced his fingers across T'Pol's upper arm while Solan remained pillowed against his bicep and tricep. She rolled onto her side to look at him, head balanced in her right hand, held up by her elbow as her left fingers came up to twine with his.

_What do you have planned for your daily activities?_

Trip hadn't even really thought about how out of practice they were at communicating this way. During the development cycle for _Tirpitz_ they had communicated this way almost to the exclusion of any other method. It allowed them to converse privately while still in his parents' presence and it had become so routine that it almost required more effort to physically form words.

_I think I'm gonna go for a run then who knows? Did you have anything in mind?_

_Not specifically, no._

_Good._

She cocked a brow at him, _Good?_

_It's kinda nice knowin' there's nowhere we need to be, nothin' we need to do, we can just act like a normal family._

_What would your ideal day entail?_

He thought about that a moment, in his mind he'd never had anything beyond generic snap-shots, a sort of broad idea of the highlights of family life without context or the specifics that helped frame the concept. _I don't really know, honestly._

_I seem to remember you once mentioning a beach towel, a bottle of rum, and optional clothing on a blue June night at one point._

_The things we say in our youth, darlin'._

_If I recall correctly that was not even five years ago._

_But I was younger back then._

_We should take a vacation…maybe a short one, but you gotta be getting' sick of this house._

_Where would we go?_

_Somewhere…anywhere! Just…_ the emotions hit him unbidden, a sudden wash of sad desperation, _I feel like I'm not here for y'all, like it's all passin' me by and we'll have nothin' together to remember._

_K'diwa…_

_Solan's four…four years old, and I wa'n't even here for half of it. What kind of dad am I?_

She stroked his hand softly, _He knows how much you care for him as do I, your absence is a sacrifice being made for his safety and wellbeing as well as that of all humanity and Vulcan-kind._

_But I've already missed so much, his first steps, his first words…_

She cocked her brow at him again, _Because you were at work that day, you were able to see him the very evening of the day he reached those developmental benchmarks. You should know, his first word was 'dada'._

His eyes went wide, _I thought…_

_No, you assumed since it is most common in human development to say 'mama' first, in this case he wanted you to be there and lacking the ability to interact with you directly via the parent-child bond, he attempted vocalization._

In the next room the domestic communicator beeped its rapid mail incoming tone. He moved to rise but T'Pol clamped her hand onto his wrist. _You are on leave…_

_I know, if had been about work it'd have gone right into the mail storage system without alerting us._

Trip slipped his arm from under Solan's head, gently lowering it onto a pillow then swung off the bed and headed towards the adjacent study. She listened as he entered the office room and opened up the electronic mail system on the communication device and after a few minutes softly swore. She felt the spike of irritation in the bond and quickly swung herself off the side of the bed and went to the study, bringing a hand up instinctively to softly stroke her belly and the child there-in should it somehow be discomforted by her father's sudden anger.

He turned to look at her once she reached the door, irritation painted across his face but also a utterly out-of-place coat of amusement. "Guess what…"

"You _are_ on leave, it can wait."

"We've gotta get married."

Her brows climbed, completely unprepared for that declaration, "What?"

"That was the benefits office callin', turns out you're not eligible to be listed as my next of kin, and they want a custody agreement regardin' Solan."

"But we are married." T'Pol declared in a flat humorless tone.

"Not accordin' to Earth law it would seem."

She furrowed her brows, folding his arms across her chest defensively, "It was my understanding that the courts had not reached a decision regarding this and everything regarding your benefits was given approval pending the decision."

"Well, looks like the courts decided not in our favor." He answered with a sigh.

"Marriages between non-humans are considered legitimate in most situations on Earth." She countered.

"Because they're not considered Earth nationals or, in some situations, they have legal documentation from their world of origin. Vulcan doe'n't put it on paper, so as a cultural observance and the fact we're both considered Earth citizens, it's not binding."

"This is ridiculous."

"I know." He paused, his voice catching a second as he started to speak, "Look… If you don' wanna get married here, I'll un'erstand, we can get all the paperwork drawn up with a lawyer'n make this go away."

"Of course we will get married following human custom. I had just assumed we would proceed with less spontaneity as I assume we will have to expedite the process now that our legal status is in question."

"You mean it?" He didn't hide his excitement or elation.

"Trip, do not be silly, I had always intended to wed you under your customs as well. You are my mate, I am yours…we have to combine both worlds, remember? To rely solely on the Vulcan ceremony to codify our relationship would be to insult your world's traditions." She said in a softer tone than she had been using, "I had just hoped I would not have been required to walk down the aisle 'knocked up' as it were."

Trip grinned at her, "We could always grab a few Vulcans from Sausalito to act as shotgun groomsmen and have Soval give you away givin' me the stink-eye."

She cocked a brow at him, "Or, perhaps, we can fake an elopement, I can climb out of the window at the Vulcan Hostel at our embassy, slide down a rope made of bed clothes and we can rush off to Las Vegas to be married at a drive-through wedding chapel."

"Maybe I can just bonk you over the head and drag you back to my cave."

"Kidnap me from the homestead and carry me off on a horse to your ger, or tent, or whatever sort of semi-nomadic structure would be applicable."

"Me Tarzan, you Jane."

"The options are limitless."

They stared at one another a moment, neither saying a word, then just as abruptly as the conversation had ended they began to walk towards one another. He brought his lips to hers and she placed her hands on his chest as they shared a long, tender kiss. When they stepped back from each other they made a moment of eye contact and both began to speak.

"I need to make some calls."

"I need to pick out a dress."

* * *

><p>"Well I'll be damned…" Gardner declared as he read the PADD that had just been placed in front of him by an ensign in the executive suite of the MCS Command cafeteria.<p>

Archer arched a brow at Gardner; he'd been shadowing the Admiral for days now as they went over every possible detail about the initial pre-fabrication schedule for the K-7 DSS. The _Triumph_ class hull that would be providing the space-frame for _Enterprise_ wasn't even five percent done, but there was already thirty crews working on the phase 1 structure for the station. "What is it?"

"Vulcan got off their asses…they're going to be starting on their first Space Docks facility, looks like it'll be up in time for the block three Saxon class boats."

Archer's eyes went wide, "They're going to be building our ships there?"

"Yep, slight caveat is that ten percent of the active crew on the ships has to be Vulcan, but they'll be sending them to sixteen months of doctrine and practice on some of our patrol boats so they fit into the crew." We have eighteen currently on loan as cultural attachés doing the trade corridor runs to Rigel and Tellar." Gardner replied as he sat down the PADD and lifted his mug of coffee, likely his fifth of the day.

The executive suite of the cafeteria was meant for flag officers and visiting dignitaries. There was a chef available eighteen hours a day to prepare whatever fare might be desired, Archer himself had opted for a steak, but Gardner was peculiar in this regard if in no others. People had said of Gardner that he was an ass, a know it all, a perpetual desk jockey who had no idea what the navy was actually about, but they also would say he never let his station affect his eating habits. He ate the same slop they fed the sailors that used the cafeteria which was still on a much higher standard than what was typically available to ship crews or those that were at the academies or basic training, but still the same basic mass produced stuff. Instead of a tray, they had it plated on MCS Command china, but it was the same pork chops and rice that was being served on line in the main facility. The same slightly undercooked broccoli, the same overcooked carrots, the same salad, and the same crappy coffee.

Archer didn't even want to look at the stuff, but Gardner dug into it like it was a five star meal. That's just who he was, the ultimate middle manager finally up at CEO. Gardner had, in effect, slogged through the military just like everyone else to get where he was now, he had just done it mostly dirt side managing and micro-managing every aspect of MCS from beans, bullets, and blankets to establishing replenishment routes and fleet movements. He was a logistics man at heart and it was here that his meticulous and usually insufferable nature shone brightest because MCS ran like a well-oiled machine despite the fact that every aspect of it _should_ have been a logistical nightmare. When he finally was able to look at the logistics required for "at-sea" replenishment of task groups like DeGuello and the flotillas running the trade corridors he wasn't able to help but arrive at the conclusion that Sam Gardner was an absolute genius, which could make the fact he was a complete dick either better or worse.

"How do we feel about that?" Archer asked after a pause.

"Well, between you and me, they're damn sloppy sailors for the most part, they also don't work well when they're in a position subordinate to someone less intelligent than, but they work hard so as long as they can adapt to the doctrine and culture, I think it'll be fine." Gardner commented before cutting into one of the cardboard thin "pork chops" with his fork and scooping up some rice. He stuck the fork in his mouth, chewed a few times, swallowed then spoke again, "I bet this'll light a fire under Andoria's ass to get on board with the program too."

"I kind of get the feeling they're a bit too hard a group of chargers to toe the line. First time the words 'strategic withdrawal' or 'judicious restraint' were issued they'd probably ask for immediate court-martial and release from service so they could go attack themselves." Archer quipped as he poked his steak with the knife.

"Well, we might have to send them to basic just like everyone else. There have been plenty of people on this planet like that too, but you get to a point where your cultural foibles take the back seat to your duty. We've been doing it for hundreds of years, they don't get special and unique snow-flake status if it comes down to what's necessary to run an effective fleet."

"You know, Admiral, you have no idea how reassuring it is to hear you say that." Jon grinned.

"You've got a star now too, Archer, you can call me Sam." The senior flag officer declared, "Besides, I'm not a politician yet. Forrest can talk the game, so can Black, but usually in a way the bureaucrats absolutely hate, but I wouldn't know how to be diplomatic and political even if it was from the piss-everyone-off school."

"I guess the fact I'm not still just a captain hasn't quite sunk in yet." Archer half grinned.

"It usually doesn't with your fleet boys until they've pinned the second one on you." Gardner took a sip of his coffee, then grunted with a chuckle, "Then you turn into complete asses."

"You can't tell me you never wanted to captain a ship." Archer quipped back.

"Back in those days it was nothing but Grainger class destroyers; I went out for a cruise as far as Jupiter when they were putting the Coolidge through sea trials and decided it was not the thing for me." Gardner replied.

"Did they really make the whole crew wear EVA suits when at duty stations?" Archer inquired.

"On paper, yeah, but in reality it was mostly just engineering and damage control that did. Of course, with those puny crews they had, that was probably about half the total number of personnel. Shitty little tin cans with guns and nacelles strapped to them, the power plant took up a third of the ship, impulse drive another fifth, environmental was in the drive bay so if we lost the engine we'd have lost life support too. Everyone hot-racked because there was only room for fifteen bunks, that captain and XO had quarters not much bigger than your office on Enterprise, and weapons division literally slept next to their payload."

Archer grimaced at this accounting of life on the first generation MCS warships; prior to that they had literally used converted freighters as gun-scows to protect trade convoys.

"Little bastards were fast as hell though for the size. They were designed to run warp three but they'd punch them up to four five, in system runs were so fast you'd almost forget how far you were going." Gardner mused with some hard-to-place nostalgic melancholy.

"And then within a lifetime Trip breaks warp nine." Archer commented as a sort of benediction.

"I think that's a good part of the reason Vulcan wants in, there comes a point where you have to consider if you just want to be a hanger-on or do something. The fact that the Romulans made true believers out of some of them helps too, but if nothing else the tech is going to convince them all to jump on board. The treaty law'll probably get hashed out for about a year, but once it's done, that's the next step to a federation. By God Greg was right about that one too, he kept saying a Federation of planets would be the way to go and I'll be damned if that's not what this is starting to look like."

Archer shook his head, eyes widening, "Honestly, I never thought we'd get to see it in this lifetime."

Gardner chuckled again, coffee mug inches from his lips, "Hell Jon, you weren't even born when they were still trying to stifle our progress at every turn. This is like hell freezing over for all the old guard."

" Nah, hell freezing over would be Andoria and Vulcan agreeing to a mutual defense treaty."

Gardner grinned devilishly, "Funny you should mention it…"


	59. Chapter 59

"How damn, Ellie…Trip and T'Pol are gonna have to tie the knot."

Elaine Tucker turned to her husband as he came storming into the sitting room through the back porch doors, the domestic communicator receiver still in hand, he was grinning ear to ear.

"Way I remember it that did that on Vulcan."

"Yeah, they did, but turns out the courts couldn't recognize it without paperwork."

Elaine smirked, "You're telling me that Vulcan didn't provide a marriage certificate."

Charles Jr. looked slightly mystified, "Nope, apparently they don't do that, culture and tradition is the only thing they go on, nothing legal as far as paper goes."

"Wait, so we're talking about the only thing Vulcans don't get anal retentive about is legal documents?"

"Sure seems that way."

Elaine arched her brows as she contemplated that, "So, they're gonna run up to the court house and get hitched there or what?"

Charles grinned again, "Nope, they're goin' all the way, in a church and everything."

Elaine came off the couch, not sure where to scramble and what to do first, "You mean it? Oh Charlie! They're gonna do it the right way, ceremony and everything?"

"Yes'm, T'Pol is adamant that they honor human tradition since the Vulcan wedding was one hundred percent their cultural practice."

"Do you think she'd wear your mother's wedding dress? She's a tiny little thing, but if we take it in she should probably fit in it, right?" Elaine, how had about three inches and a good twenty pounds on the petite Vulcan had worn the ancestral dress when she and Charles had wed nigh forty years prior, and while she had hardly been a large woman by any stretch of the imagination, she knew T'Pol was positively waifish by comparison.

"We might not need to take it in," A smirky grin once again crossed his face, "She's five months along on number two."

Elaine's eyes went even wider, bordering on the physically impossible given how wide they already where from the initial revelation that the pair would be completing a traditional human wedding ceremony. "Why didn't we know?"

"Because she was keepin' it secret so Trip could find out first." A kind of sadness began to show in her husband's eyes as his smile became more sublimely staid, a kind of bitter-sweetness to his expression, "They're gonna have a little girl and they're gonna name her after Lizzie."

Elaine let out a single sobbing breath as she clamped her hand over her mouth and tears began to fill her eyes.

"Yeah…I guess we didn't lose her…not really, we're gonna get our little Lizzie back, she's just gonna have pointy ears."

"It had to be Trip who did that." She said as she wiped the tears from her eyes.

Charles smiled, "He's gotta good woman, Ellie…if I ever wasn't sure about it, I know better now. Namin' her Elizabeth was T'Pol's idea."

Elaine was wracked with another sob, something happy and sad at the same time, like the hurt of the old wound had come back but would finally be healed, once and for all.

"Remember that time we came home and they were here?" Charles began, his own eyes glistening a little as the hurt came back to him but only so it could be assuaged for the last time, "T'Pol told Trip that if their first born was a daughter she wanted to name her Elizabeth. Trip sort of assumed that when they found out it was gonna be a boy that the arrangement was done with. But T'Pol had already decided that they were gonna name her Elizabeth Tucker."

"Bless that girl." Elaine managed between soft sobs.

Charles finally brought a hand to his own eyes, wiping away tears with the heal of his palm, "We need to start makin' calls, they wanna have a good ol' fashioned southern weddin'. The whole family is gonna show for this one if I gotta drag 'em to it."

"What about her mother? I doubt she's going to be able to get away from her teaching position."

Charles shrugged, "They weren't too concerned about it since she got to be at the Vulcan wedding and we didn't. Hell, we didn't even know about the Vulcan wedding."

Elaine furrowed her brows, "Yeah, you know that kind of bothered me that Trip never told us he was married to her. I sort of assumed it was the Vulcan equivalent of a Vegas fifteen minute wedding."

"I don't think they have an equivalent of Elvis, Ellie."

Elaine looked around the room, searching for some visual cue to inform her of the next step of action. She honestly never thought she'd see the day Trip would be walking down the aisle at a Chruch. She assumed that if he ever did get married it would be as gun point or in front of a judge. Albert and his on-again off-again girl didn't seem to be heading any which way but to an eventual final break-up. And of course Elizabeth…no, she was gone, but she'd be back again, new and perfect. The dress…of course…the Tucker family dress that had actually been passed down since the late 1990s and had somehow managed to endure the passage of time and seven generations of women wedding into the Tucker family. This would be the eighth time and it would also represent the beginning of a possible new trend; a woman that wasn't human wearing the dress.

Each time a woman had married into the family, it had been up to the Tucker matriarch to add some element of them to the bridal train, and it only took a moment of thought to know exactly what to put in place to represent T'Pol and the strange new blood she brought into the family.

"Charlie, you're gonna be making the calls, I've got some work on the train to do." She declared as she began towards the stairs to access the upper floor and attic.

"Yes'm, I'll get on that. What're you gonna put on it for T'Pol?"

She turned and winked at her husband, "You'll see."

* * *

><p>Proconsul Demek had an understanding of humans that most of the remaining consuls did not, his son and his second, Centurion Valek had given him a better idea of what made these people tick, what made them who and what they were. Both his son and Centurion Valek, as well as most of their subordinates were in awe of the human military machine. Some still resented the humans but even in this resentment there was respect. From what he heard, he had to respect their might and discipline if not so much their strategic methodology, they had, after all, effectively gutted their offensive military capability. There was some debate to whether the Romulan Empire would even be able to defend itself. Interestingly, they had suffered no predation from the Klingons, a fact that had as much to do with the humans as did their current defensive capability. A human naval force sat at the Klingon border, effectively suppressing any movement of the Klingons outside their borders.<p>

As far as Demek was concerned, these were not the people you made war with, these were people you went out of your way to ensure there would be no hostility, barring the potential of an outright alliance. He knew Takal would be bringing the matter of an armistice to a vote, what remained to be seen was just how much the senate was willing to approach matters pragmatically rather than on the grounds of some sort of racial indignity. There certainly would be some measure of anger still, but with the options available and the recourse rapidly diminishing, it was time to look at other avenues in dealing with the problem of humanity.

In terms of tractability all Demek had to look at was their treatment of Vulcan. When human forces had come into conflict with Romulan expeditionary units, there was the perception that it was the result of human hegemonic interests with Vulcan, what it had actually turned out to be was Vulcan's status as an ally and friend of Earth and humans were willing to sacrifice their own lives to ensure Vulcan remained free. Demek had balked at this, it was not until his son had revealed that one of the first things the Humans had done when Romulan Expeditionary Forces entered Shi'kahr was to secure the high command and make concessions for their evacuation to ensure continuity of Government he almost hadn't known how to react. No attempts were made to evacuate human diplomatic functionaries or staff. The _only_ concession had been made for Vulcans. When it appeared that the human stronghold in the city would fall, the human soldiers made plans to evacuate Vulcan civilians then fight to the last man to allow time for escape.

Valek had revealed that one of their jailors had been one of those "marines" that had been at the garrison and had told the Centurion in the course of their eventual friendship that the commanding officer of the Garrison and entire operations theatre had ordered the human soldiers their duty was to fight to their last breath to hold the Romulan forces off. The way Valek recounted the tale and the events of those horrible, ill-fated assaults sent chills through Demek, doubly so that his own son had been standing in the front ranks during them.

"It is safe to assume that the human forces would have invaded our territory regardless, their campaign was clearly centered around the destruction of our war capacity. However, the aggression by which they prosecuted this campaign clearly seemed to coincide with our military's repeated forays across the established demarcation line of our territory into space they had established as territory in which we would not be permitted." Sub-consul Valaris declared in loud booming tones throughout the senate chamber, "Based on that, it is safe to conclude that our continued military belligerence following the retreat from Vulcan in the following sixteen months created an environment where-in human forces concluded the only potential method for containment was the destruction of our offensive capability. Therefore, if there are any individuals who must be called to task regarding the disastrous aftermath of Vulcan it must be the military leadership which crafted the original policies."

The Praetor did not seem pleased by this line of discourse, but he paid careful attention to each word of it. It wasn't a secret that he was a militarist and his ear was often open to the honeyed words of the de-facto warlords. Still, he had to preside of the greatest disaster in the Empire's history and to this extent he would have to absorb and dole out responsibility if he wanted to survive this. There had been coups before, and a Praetor was not insulated from the blades of the senate if they proved incompetent or corrupt. "In regards to culpability, where lies the blame?"

The Praetor rarely spoke and he watched as the sub-consul turned to his daughter who gave a quick nod. "With the respect due, Praetor, the crafter of the original policy must bear the majority of the blame."

The Praetor nodded with a frown, "It was, indeed, my belief that we could unit with our Vulcan cousins through the projection of power."

The sub-consul spoke again, "And in this regard, the blame for failure of policy would reside with you, Praetor. However, the effect of human ferocity can be blame squarely on the military procedure as was set forth by Visek, Gollon, and Y'rel."

These three men had been named the butchers of Vulcan even among their own people. Visek as commander of the fleets, Gollon specifically delegating forces for the invasion and the policies they would follow on the ground, and Y'rel whose Tal'Shiar had been tasked with the liquidation of the Vulcan ruling class, intellectuals, and the deportation and enslavement of their thinkers. Visek had, at least, possessed the couth to kill himself with the extent of his failure and the consequences had come to light. Gollon was currently imprisoned for gross negligence, and Y'rel was somehow still managing to leverage influence and favors to avoid prison and, possible, execution.

"I emplaced those men and gave them authority to craft those plans of action, any failing of theirs is a failing of mine." The Praetor declared in an imperious tone, "If there should be a punishment, then mine must be the most severe."

He'd insulated himself to at least some degree in that regard. Praetors who accepted responsibility were never killed in the senate, they could possibly face execution and in the past more than one had commit suicide by way of atoning, but in this regard the Praetor had demonstrated the correct response politically to the crisis. Demek watched as Takal rose from her seat, he knew what she would say, they had gone over it all at home just prior to her revelation that she had been sleeping with Centurion Valek since he arrived at their home months ago. Demek hadn't been sure how he felt about that at the time, but the fact she hadn't been with anyone other than him during that entire time seemed somewhat promising to the Pro-Consul who had always tried to be oblivious to his childrens' love lives but somehow finding he was always unable to remain completely ignorant.

"Praetor, there will likely be some censure of your office, but our investigations have revealed that you were ignorant to the machinations of those three individuals in question. All documentation provided to your office and Tal'Shiar surveillance of your conferences reveal that you had been just as misled as the rest of the Romulan people. While this may beg questions regarding the degree to which the Praetor can operate without a suitably inquisitive nature, the only aspersion it casts on your person is that you are, perhaps, too trusting." Takal declared.

The Praetor turned his head slightly to make eye contact with Demek, some measure of subtle consternation in his eyes. He was, doubtlessly, wondering if this was a power play to unseat him, which in this situation could be the best thing for all parties involved. If a Praetor were to be removed for placing too much trust in the Romulan people, all that could be said was that the poor fool was an idealist. Politically being an idealist was perhaps the worst thing one could be, but in his capacity as the head of government, being an idealist typically was well received among the people.

"The failure, consul, is still mine. In my capacity as Praetor it is necessary for me to approach all things with a suitable level of inquisitive skepticism, in this I have failed in the position and I propose a referendum on whether I should face recall pending any criminal charges of my person."

Well played, he was not only accepting the blame, he was owning it. He was throwing himself on the mercy of the people. He would likely resign regardless, but in propping himself up to let the people be his judge, they would likely clamor for his canonization. He would be a king-maker in the wake of it all, he'd be able to effectively name his successor in all but actual word. Demek knew what would be needed for their people to survive and thrive in the wake of all this, but in order for that to happen he would either have to be named Praetor or ensure the replacement would be amenable to his subtle manipulations.

* * *

><p>Jonathan Archer collapsed in the deck chair with a groan, finally some relief from this constant running around and micro-management of minutia. The twenty days since <em>Enterprise<em> had put back in had been a non-stop blur of activity as he was settled into his new position as MCS's newest admiral. It was almost as if they wanted him cross trained on as many of the staff and command concerns as possible before he could even begin thinking about his intended post as theatre command. He wasn't sure why, but Forrest, Black, Sanderson and Gardner seemed to want him to understand everything about the life and culture of headquarters despite the fact that he would be operating in the same sort of realm as Ngyuen, Gottle, and Yost who, some said, hadn't set foot in the headquarters building in the better part of a decade. Some estimates stated that Yost hadn't actually set foot on Earth in seven years. Jon knew this wasn't the case as he had seen Yost at the Naval Ball and Gala four years prior.

The latest reading material he had been supplied with was a set of specifications and proposed names and commands for the block three _Iowa_ class boats. The design had undergone numerous revisions, so many as to almost be another class of ship entirely, and as he perused the new specifications and changes he couldn't help but note how many of the version changes had "C. Tucker" on the revision body line for author of the report responsible for the changes. The Block three boats would be longer, sleeker, the saucer more elliptical with smoother lines, smaller nacelles, a large module section and less modularization for mission oriented needs but a slightly more efficient overall profile. Stated maximum speed would be warp 8.8 versus the listed 8.1 for the Block One boats, which meant, if he knew anything about Trip, would be that warp 9.5 would be the in-practice maximum speed. The variety of weaponry had dropped off some, fewer batteries of rail guns, but there would be ten batteries of the huge 225mm guns, more photonic torpedoes in the compliment and major improvements to the phase array and cannon batteries.

The crew compliment was listed as two hundred eighty with two full companies of Marines, she was still designed to bring the fight to an enemy, but it seemed to be better-rounded in terms of the size of the science division compared to the Block One and Two boats as they had initially been designed. The stated goal was to have all block 1 and 2 boats upgraded to the block 3 revision by the time they began a block 4, but given the development cycle Archer wasn't sure there ever would be a block 4 before something bigger and better came along.

He had to admit he liked the look even better than he did that of the _Tirpitz_ or the _Triumph _class. The long aggressive lines had gotten longer and more aggressive; the nacelles were now compact and no longer needed the layers of armoring. Everything seemed sleek now, it looked like some concept future starship, not something that would actually come from out of the docks and if it weren't for the fact that every inch had been committed to blueprints and schematics and fabrication schedules, he'd half believe that this was nothing more than a concept image.

The real question is where the _hell_ Trip found the time to come up with all of this given his tight sortie schedule he'd had since _Tirpitz_ slipped its moorings? Jon was starting to feel spoiled that he'd never had to so divide his attention as to make time between his duties as captain to come up with new protocols for…well…anything!

"You've got an invitation the counter."

He turned his head to look into the kitchen/breakfast room/sitting room area of the apartment to see Erika wrapped in a Towel, her hair still hanging wet from a shower around her shoulders. Part of him thought about getting up out of the deck chair and giving that towel a tug, but at the moment he was feeling entirely too old to move and if they had been anywhere but down-town San Francisco he'd have been half tempted to just get her to come out on the balcony so they could play house right there.

"Another dinner social or is this some graduation bullshit over at Canoe U?"

He could hear something mischievous in her voice, "Not exactly, I got one too, but I didn't open yours."

"Well what is it?"

"Get off your ass and come see, admiral Archer. I'm not technically your secretary."

He grunted as he rose from his reclining position and walked through the sliding glass door back inside, "Yeah, good thing too, because there'd be a strict no-towel policy."

"You'd want me in uniform all the time huh?"

"No, I'd have you walking around in nothing at all so I could constantly enjoy the view." He quipped as he crossed to the counter.

"I'm pretty sure that would garner you an EO complaint a day." She fired back.

"Like you'd actually complain."

"I would if you didn't put out at least daily if I was going to be on parade." She countered as she headed back to the bedroom, dropping the towel and giving her backside a suggestive wiggle before ducking inside.

"Tease!" he shouted after her, then looked down and picked up the envelope. The stock was a kind of pale egg-shell color and he could feel the fibrous texture of the paper used. On the front were the words Adm. Jonathan B. Archer in a sort of flowing script that was unmistakable as anything but hand-written. He slid a finger under the tongue of the envelope and separated it from the body and lifting the flap reached in to pull the square of stiff stock identical in texture and color to the envelope it had come in. The invitation itself was folded and upon opening it he was treated to more hand-written words in the same even script as was on the envelope itself.

You are cordially invited

To the Nuptials of

Capt. Charles Anthony Tucker III

and

T'Pol of clan Sokel

He didn't read the rest, he lowered it, eyes wide and shouted towards the bedroom, "I thought they were married."

"On Vulcan, not on Earth, apparently." Erika shouted back.

He looked at the location and date. "So they're actually doing it in a church?"

Erika stepped from the bedroom pulling on a pair of panties, the bra already fastened, "Yeah, they're going traditional and everything, isn't it great!"

"Isn't it going to look weird with one kid already and T'Pol well on the way to the second?" Archer commented, some misplaced stab or irritated jealousy chewing at him.

"Jon, it's the twenty second century, you do realize people still do that, right?"

"Just seems like weird timing…" He turned over the invitation, looking at the stock more closely, then flipping it back open to look at the penmanship.

"So they should just stay like us, huh?" She was trying not to sound too critical but the hint of edge in her voice was unmistakable. She was in the process of twisting her hair into a pony tail and stopped the motions while she waited for his reply.

"Damn right they should, when we get married it's going to be at a court house so we don't have to deal with the guests."

She stopped moving, having resumed the motions of pulling her hair into place, "When…?"

"I'm going to have to make an honest woman of you at some point or some junior officer is going to come in and sweep you off your feet." He quipped half-heartedly while looking at the nuance of the lettering, able to identify the pen strokes by the thickness of ink. When he looked up she was almost on top of him.

"Jon, you better fucking mean it or so help me…"

"I do!" He brought his hands up, palms outward in a mock-defensive gesture, "So help me, I'm serious. I'm thinking we can get stealth-married without the admiralty knowing about it once Kilo Seven is ready then they'll have no choice but to keep you in place there. We'll never be more than a few parsecs away from each other and I'll probably be back in port at K seven three weeks out of the month."

She leaned in, giving him a quick peck on the lips then brought up one hand, index finger and thumb forming a circle, "I want a rock…this big."

He chuckled, "Basalt or feldspar?"

She abruptly turned hyper-girlish, bouncing on the balls of her feet, her words almost a sing-songy whine, "Oh come on, you have to get me a ring, I want a ring Jon, I want something I can wear."

He leaned in, returning the peck, "I'll get you a ring, and it won't be made from some pluton somewhere."

"You can't say it then go back on it, verbal contract." She declared, still affecting a disposition that seemed decidedly more feminine than was usual from her.

"I promise." He stepped in a bit closer, "Wanna go fool around?"

Her hands came up to ward him off, not because of the advance but more to convince herself, "Oh no you don't, I just go out of the shower."

"You can take another shower." He stated, reaching around behind her to grab ahold of her backside, edging her towards the counter.

"Jon! I just got my hair dry and we have a reservation for seven thirty!" She protested, a bit of color entering her cheeks and throat.

"We could always cancel."

Erika glared at him, "Black would kill you, then he'd kill me for not killing you first, then his wife would kill him."

"I must be a Klingon spy." He chuckled.

"You…you're something all right."

* * *

><p>Admiral Black heard an uncharacteristic knock at the door to his office, something that usually only happened when his personal staff and aides had something that needed his immediate attention. Still, he knew their knocks, even and rhythmic, he could tell who it was by the knock. This wasn't anything like those that he knew, it was quick and sporadic lacking rhythm or meter. Basically the personality of the individual who did it would be sporadic, nervous, easily agitated. Oh…it must be Max.<p>

"Enter." He called out as the big oak doors swung open and in walked Forrest and Ambassador Soval.

The men crossed to stand in front of his desk as he rose, "Gentlemen, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Forrest spoke, "Tucker is on track for another Navy Cross for Taskgroup: Linebacker, right?"

"Yeah, and another silver star. And the DSM for the design and upgrade schedule over the past three years, too. He's up for plenty of bright work right now."

Ambassador Soval clamped his hands behind his back, "By virtue of my culture's refusal to legally codify the institution of marriage by ascribing a legal process, it would appear that the marriage of your Captain Tucker and T'Pol has not been recognized as valid by your own court system."

Black looked confused, "So we're going to trade in the medals to get the courts to overlook it?"

Forrest shook his head with a smirk, "No, Greg, but T'Pol and him are going to have to get hitched the old fashioned way here."

"Oh, okay, I see. So why the question about the medals?" Black inquired.

"Well, they're planning to walk the aisle in a few days and Tucker's going to wear his dress whites so it might look good to have all the bright work on him since you have to know the media is going to show up for this."

Black nodded, "I have some strings I can pull, what kind of time table are we talking about with the wedding?"

Forrest grimaced a little, "Five days?"

"Wow…"

"Yeah."

"How long have we known about this?" Black asked, furrowing his brows.

"I found out today, they started planning three days ago apparently." Max supplied with a shrug.

"What prompted this?"

Soval answered this time, "They only became aware of the fact that their status was not legally recognized as married under Earth law four days ago. Given that T'Pol and their son effectively have no legal status vis-à-vis mister Tucker led them to expedite the process."

The Vulcan paused then arched a single brow, "I suppose it would also be pertinent to say that T'Pol is, at present, pregnant with their second child."

Black looked at Forrest fighting down a smirk, "Well that was quick,"

Soval arched a brow, "I am not sure I follow the context, admiral."

"You'll forgive me for saying, ambassador…" Black began, weighing his next words but coming up in favor of being true to his character, "but it never really seemed to me that Vulcan women would be so sexually…eager."

The ambassador kept his brow up, but hoisted it just a bit higher, "What should have been the approximate time-table for her to conceive, admiral?"

"Honestly, I'd figured she'd have one-and-done that aspect of their married life."

"Yet you were aware of the nature of pon farr."

Black grinned a little, "Honestly, at least part of me thought that was the Vulcan way of putting on over on the rest of the galactic community and it wasn't actually a real thing."

Soval's expression took on its own hint of amusement, "It may interest you to know, admiral, but Vulcans actually do enjoy sex with a roughly analogous percentage to most sapient species."

"So you're saying it's not always Tucker's idea?" Forrest inquired with his own smirk.

"I am not saying anything, admiral; I am simply providing you with some information germane to the conversation." Soval replied.

"So, do we think we can get those awards in time?" Forrest inquired, changing the subject back to the reason for the visit.

"Not sure if we can get it done in five days, I mean, he's sure-fire for the awards, but in the interest of keeping some Terra Prime asshole looking for some print and sound-bites from picking it apart as Stolen Valor I don't want him to pin for the marriage ceremony until the paper is issued." Black began, running a hand through his hair. "That being said, if we can get the award authorizations approved we'll make sure he pins them to the uniform for the ceremony."

Forrest bounced he brows, cocking his head to the side, "About the best we can do. I would love to hear some Terra Prime talking head try to justify this as Stolen Valor given his war record and this was pruned down from the seven awards we talking about putting him in for."

Soval bowed his head in a nod, "I am personally grateful for your efforts in this regard, it would serve to honor T'Pol's family if he were to be seen with all appropriate honors in place, but I understand that the course of formality must be upheld."

"What precisely is your relationship to T'Pol's family, ambassador, if you don't mind me asking?" Black inquired.

The ambassador bowed his head, "I take no offense at the question, while our people often do not speak of or revel in our pre-awakening past, we are, none-the-less aware of it. My clan is directly descended from people who were in vassalage to T'Pol's clan."

"Vassalage…so you're saying her family was…what, a noble family?" Black inquired, surprise clearly evident on his face.

"Sokel, the namesake of her clan, was the last monarch of Ta'vistar in Tat'sahr province. Her father was from another Vassal clan that migrated to the Han-Shir province just following the awakening. Sokel embraced Surak's logic at least nominally, his armies had not been completely ravaged in the warring period and their position north of Chaleb-Khor prevented most overland attacks as the attrition any arm would suffer crossing the area into the Viltan Flats would be great." Soval explained, "Some feared that Sokel would eventually use his armies to impose his reign on the remainder of Vulcan since most of the other dynasties had been destroyed or ravaged beyond repair in the fighting. In the end, Sokel's influence waned by dint of their relative isolation. To this day his clan remains strong in terms of numbers, but their influence is at best nominal. When the seat of politics and culture moved to Shi'kahr they were effectively cast out of political power."

Forrest narrowed his eyes, "Ambassador that sounds disturbingly a lot like a confession that Vulcans hold grudges."

"Your interpretation is accurate, Admiral Forrest."

"I'm sort of shocked you'd admit to it." Max opined.

"As a race we have a long memory, and Sokel and his clan became a cautionary tale of the despot who might have been. Sokel's dynastic levies and warrior retinues were famed for their brutality, by the time Sokel took power from his father, they had turned defensive campaigns to their advantage, allowing enemy forces to exhaust themselves on approach then slaughtering their forces when they attempted to lay siege. Survivors, camp followers, and families were impressed into slavery or servitude. Most of the males were killed or neutered, particularly gifted warriors who were captured were given the choice of being gelded and released in Chaleb-Khor or pledging their skills to the clan. T'Pol's father's family rose from one such tribe."

Black was fascinated by the history and tradition, how much it mimicked that of some human civilizations. "Was your clan given the same choice?"

Soval seemed to be frank and almost relieved when he spoke, "My clan rose from craftsmen, our value to the clan of Sokel was rooted in our skills in the field of masonry. We were still subject to the whims of the clan, but our value was such that we were treated well and prospered."

"What ever happened to Sokel?" Forrest inquired, now thoroughly involved in the history lesson.

"It is unclear, the people of Ta'Vistar were mistrusted for generations following the awakening, and little is known about what happened to Sokel and his three eldest sons when their citadel was torn down. Some speculate that they left Vulcan to continue their worship of the old gods and became the Rihannsu, others speculate that they faded into obscurity after failing to adapt to a world without war. We will likely never know definitively and few seem incline to discover the fate of the dynasty either way. What is known is that Sokel's fourth son founded the current incarnation of the clan roughly one hundred twelve years after the death of Surak."

"Wow, so she's honest to god royalty?" Black marveled.

"We do not think of them as such, but from a matter of perspective, yes, I suppose that assessment would be correct, admiral." Soval replied, with an arched brow. "And what of Captain Tucker, does his family have similar illustrious ancestry?"

Forrest stifled a smirk, "Depends on how you want to define white trash, I guess."

"White trash hardly sounds flattering." Soval quipped in reply, his expression showing some obvious misgiving regarding Forrest's appraisal.

"It's kind of a broad brush for people of Anglo-Germanic agrarian stock that moved to North America," Black gave his fellow admiral a sharp look, "'It's not meant to be complimentary. The Tucker family had humble origins but they've been steadfast in their role supporting the UEN and MCS. His father did thirty years enlisted, his grandfather did twelve years, his great grandfather died fighting the augments. And Trip…Captain Tucker…his contributions speak for themselves."

"Okay, Greg, ease 'er back, it was just a joke." Forrest demurred at the subtle bristling from Black.

Black bowed his head slightly to Soval, "If you will excuse me, ambassador, I will start making calls about getting those awards verified so we can get the letter issued and signed. With any luck we'll be able to have it done in time for the wedding ceremony."

Soval returned the nod, "You have our most sincere appreciation, admiral."

* * *

><p>T'Pol found herself too internally excited to situate herself properly on the couch in the Tucker sitting room. It was this very same place she had sat herself close to five years ago when she had first met Charles Jr. and Elaine Tucker following the all-to-short retreat she had Trip had enjoyed there. The nervousness incumbent on meeting his parents had long since gone, she was intimately comfortable with them now, but this was a new step and a new direction and she found herself awash with excitement and apprehension that she would be, forever after, Mrs. T'Pol Tucker, at least as far as Earth was concerned. She hadn't been able to decide on what she should wear for the wedding ceremony when she was informed by Elaine that she absolutely <em>had<em> to wear the ancestral Tucker wedding gown that went back over a hundred years to Bonny Spivey when she had wed Ryan Scott Tucker, Trip's great great grandfather. Since that date, it had been passed through the family for use in wedding after wedding, having been worn by no fewer than eleven women over the years.

She would be the latest to marry into the clan, and it would be her position of honor to be the first woman not born of Earth to wear the gown and add a new chapter to its history. Elaine had explained at the time that for each bride that wore the gown, something was added to the bridal train to physically mark their place in the history of the clan. It was strange, but despite the habit of taking the name and lineage of the patriarch, it was the position of bride that physically marked the historical passage of the clan as women married into the family. It almost seemed wrong, somehow, that no woman marrying out of the family, those born as Tuckers who became members of another family were accorded the honor of wearing the gown, but it was understood, and accepted that the dress was meant to codify the position of entry. No Tucker woman who married out and into another family was ever considered to be no longer part of the clan, but to wear the gown was seen as the rite of passage coming in. The dress itself was simple but elegant; a sort of pearl shade, white at one moment, almost light grey at another, but clean and refined. The skirt was long, trailing down and behind the sleeveless A-Line gown design. There was subtle embroidery high up on the shoulders and bodice descending to the waist of the gown and bleeding away to unblemished fabric before the upper thigh region.

When she heard Elaine's foot-falls on the stairs she turned to look as the matriarch descended from up-stairs with the bridal train, lifted up reverently like some ancient tome or a crown, trailing behind her.

"I finished it this morning," Elaine declared, looking at the veil with a strange sort of nostalgia, "it came to me, what I had to do, when Charlie told me the morning Trip called."

T'Pol stood, her hand reflexively coming up to where Elizabeth resided inside her womb, "I had not meant to place any undue inconvenience on you, misses Tucker."

Elaine smiled benignly at the Vulcan, "T'Pol, you don't have to be formal with me. You can call me Elaine if you want."

T'Pol looked away, as if embarrassed, "You are to become my mother in law; it would unsuitable for me not to extend you the proper honors in that capacity."

"I don't mind, sweetie." She answered blithely.

"Then, would it be suitable to refer to you as mother Tucker?"

Elaine smiled, placing the veil on the wooden head-shape of the measurement dummy on which the dress hung. She took a moment to extend and flare the train, showing the detail generations of subtle additions had created. "I like the sound of that. Now, come take a look at it."

T'Pol immediately noticed the pattern of the lace in the train mimicked the floral pattern embroidered into the dress, but there were other elements there. At the ends of some of the winding leafy vine patterns there were small flowers, some embroidered there after the fact, some made of elegantly fine fabric to mimic the actual appearance of roses. Sewn directly in some areas in small bunches were pearls. Other places in fine, flowing, elegant script was sewn the date of previous nuptials. As she worked her way down, she marveled at the small details, how well they worked into the overall design, done carefully and with loving hands to never appear jarring or out of place.

"All of this was done by hand?" T'Pol inquired.

"It sure was, look further down." Elaine replied.

As T'Pol's eyes descended the train she finally came to the spot Elaine had indicated and stopped, there, on either side of the train she saw a meticulously embroidered IDIC, the symbol of her people rendered in pearlescent white thread, roughly seventy millimeters in diameter. And between them, spirited carefully into the pattern of the lace, in perfect Vulcan script, the words;

Parted from me, but never parted

Always and never touching and touched

T'Pol looked at Elaine, eyes wide, lips pursed, something akin to surprise but under a thick patina of reserve. To mark one of the most tangible aspects of their ancestry in such a manner was beyond what she could even begin to comprehend in terms of significance. It made her legacy, the legacy of her children an indelible mark in the history of his human clan. It made them permanent, and to a people that had not even 120 years ago knew nothing of her people, this was a step that held more significance than could be encapsulated in whatever clumsy phrasing she might be capable of. "I do not have words for this…it is…perfect."


	60. Chapter 60

**[!- WARNING: TRANSPHASIC CHRONITON TORPEDOES -!]**

**Transphasic Chroniton Torpedo** is extreamly detructive weapon. Six warheads could destroy clss 4 planet.

* * *

><p><strong>[!- WARNING: INTENTIONAL MISSPELLINGS-!]<strong>

**GUSY, I MEEN IT, THEY CAN DESTORY A CLSS 4 PLANET! THIS R SPELT RITE GUSY!**

* * *

><p><strong>[!- WARNING: AUTHOR'S NOTE AT THE BOTTOM-!]<strong>

******This is self explanatory...******

* * *

><p><strong>[!- WARNING: EXCESSIVE WARNINGS-!]<strong>

******************Are you tired of these yet?******************

* * *

><p>"Chief petty officer James Cuvey."<p>

The Naval Special Warfare operator had his hands clamped behind his back, elbows wide from his body, feet apart, "Sir."

"Would it be untoward to call you Jim or do you prefer James, chief Cuvey?" Suvak inquired, tapping a stylus against the PADD in front of him.

"Whatever you'd prefer, sir." The special forces sailor declared.

"You don't need to stand on ceremony, sailor, what do you go by?" The Vulcan inquired, a critical set to his eye. This man's unwillingness to assert himself could be problematic for him as a candidate.

"Sir, I typically go by James."

"Do you know why you are here, mister Cuvey?" The Vulcan inquired with a cocked brow.

"Sir, no sir."

Suvak stopped tapping the stylus, lacing his fingers together under his chin as he leaned back in the seat, "Would you care to venture a guess?" Suvak paused a moment, "be advised, I am not judging you on the basis of your response."

"Sir, I'd have to assume you're some Vulcan dignitary intent on assessing our military readiness and the status of our special forces groups."

Suvak arched a brow, "How many months have you been at Crane?"

"Sixteen weeks, sir."

Suvak decided it was time to challenge his preconceptions a little, "Bored?"

"Sir?"

"When you did BUDs, BEDs, SERE, Jump School, basic reconnaissance, and those dozen other training courses, schools, and programs did you image you'd be sitting in reserve for four months waiting for a team assignment and deployment?"

"No, sir, I didn't."

"Do you know why you've been sitting at Crane for sixteen weeks, James?"

The human cocked his head to side slightly, "Sir?"

Suvak reached forward and picked up the PADD, changing the subject as he did, "Mister Cuvey, have they told you your phenotype and percentage?"

"Forty eight percent system four, twenty six percent system five."

"Do you know what percentage you need to be phenotypically dominant, James?"

"Fifty nine percent, sir." The human replied.

"You are eighty nine percent system five, mister Cuvey." Suvak replied, "You're stuck at Crane while they figure out what to do with you."

"I don't follow, sir."

"There was a time when SID thirty one would try to poach you as a gun jockey, but now there is some restructuring going on with the disposition of section thirty one, so your disposition in that regard is up in the air."

The human seemed to be having a hard time taking it all in, "Respectfully, sir…what do you have to do with any of this? You're a Vulcan."

Suvak was almost prepared for this question. Surely the idea of a Vulcan in a business suit inquiring about things he should have no way of knowing would seem off enough, but then to be privy to his genetic profile and the plans and goals of MCS strategic services was almost ludicrous. "Until early last week, mister Cuvey, I was bureau chief for section thirty one on Vulcan, prior to that, I spent six years in the operations end of SID. Currently, however, I am here on the behalf of jiscog."

The mask of enlisted military dogma abruptly faded from the man, his face taking a sharp and critical look, "What does joint strategic services want with me?"

"Can I assume I'm speaking with James Cuvey now and not Chief Petty officer Cuvey?"

"You can." The human replied, his voice still holding an obvious edge, his hands no longer clamped behind his back but hanging at his sides, his feet together as if ready to spring.

Suvak leaned forward, elbows on the desk behind which he sat, fingers still laced together, "How would you like a job, Jim?"

* * *

><p>Archer stepped into the sacristy to see Charles Tucker Jr. fussing over his son's uniform. The elder Tucker wore the chief petty officer dress white uniform and the distinction between the two was immediately evident by the relatively modest number of ribbons and medals on Charles Jr. versus the staggering array of awards pinned to Trip's dress white jacket.<p>

"Don't get too comfortable with that, I come bearing more responsibility." Jon declared as he entered.

Trip grinned, "Uh oh, whatcha got?"

Archer flipped open the award box, "They fast tracked you again, Navy Cross, another silver star, and a DSM."

The elder Tucker looked to Archer then back to his son, "Damn, boy…what've you been up to?"

"I'm justa magnet, dad, I fall down and come back up with gold attached."

Archer took the Combination Cap out from under his arm and set it on a table, prompting a whistle from Trip, "Damn, look at those scrambled eggs."

Archer looked back at the double gold oak leaf laurels on the bill and smirked, "They look good, don't they?"

Jon stepped over to where Trip stood as the elder Tucker yielded to the newly minted admiral as he began attaching the award devices to the uniform, balking slightly at the array of medals and ribbons. Attaching the fourth gold star to the silver star ribbon just helped push it that much more home. The gold star attaching to the Navy Cross ribbon seemed of secondary importance to the perfect line of four 5'16th inch devices on the red white and blue ribbon corresponding to the 5 silver star medals on his chest. Trip was a machine, almost like the essence of the navy given form.

"Damn, Trip, how much does that jacket weigh now?" Archer inquired through a grin.

"'Bout a million pounds." Trip quipped, his expression less than wry, "I kinda figured these were still months out."

"The father-in-law-by-proxy lit a fire under Black to get them fast tracked since it was just them waiting to put the ink on the paper at this point." Archer replied. "Soval grabbed Forrest and applied the pressure to get this done so you could wear the extra hardware for the ceremony, something about it conferring more prestige to T'Pol's clan."

"Your Uncle Robert is gonna flip his lid." Charles Jr. added, his expression some cryptic mixture of amusement and consternation.

"He showed?" Trip balked.

"It was either he showed or I'd skin'em alive. He was gonna come to my boy's wedding whether he liked it or not."

Archer chuckled, "Ain't family great?"

"It's not all that bad, admiral." The Tucker patriarch countered in his most deferential tone.

"Mister Tucker, there is absolutely no reason in hell you need to call me Admiral, you did more time in than either of us." Archer declared, smirking slightly as he adjusted the pinned position of the sea of awards on Trip's jacket breast.

"Just seems weird talking that way to anybody with brightwork, mister Archer." Charles replied, prompting a smirk from Trip.

"Oh is that right? You've never called me 'captain Tucker'."

"Never to your face, anyway." Charles Jr. fired back at his son, a slight smirk starting to show.

"Oh, but I remember havin' to call you Command Master Chief Petty Officer that whole last year of high school when I said I wanted to join MCS. Or any time I was in trouble, then it was 'sir, yes sir, master chief'."

"That's because I was half responsible for bringin' you into this world, boy."

Trip and Jon cut eyes at one another, stifling chuckles, "Right, yeah, okay dad."

Archer took a step back, surveying the status of the awards, "Alright, looks good, but we forgot one thing."

Trip furrowed his brows, unsure what could possibly be out of place with both his father and Archer working in tandem. "What?"

Archer reached into his pants pocket and pulled out another small box, flipping it open to reveal the Eagle and Trident Special Warfare pin in gold, "You never remember to put this on."

Trip arched his brow, his expression exasperated, "Jon, I was only NSW for a few months durin' forty seven."

"Yeah, but you completed the course work, you're technically still authorized to wear it. You trained for it, and you bled for it, you deserve to wear it. Besides, you just know the second you walk out of the chapel the cameras are going to start snapping and the more metal you've got on your chest the more it shuts up the detractors."

The elder Mr. Tucker nodded, the Eagle and Trident emblem on his own chest from his time as critical response security forces. "He's right, son, you earned the right to wear it, probably a whole hell of a lot more than I did."

Trip gave them both a melancholic little smile, "Thanks dad, Jon."

Archer smirked at his form engineer and 3IC, "So, are you nervous?"

Trip grinned at this, "Hell no, I was nervous when I had to get in a death match with a Vulcan the first time through, this is gonna be simple."

Jon cocked a brow, "No second thoughts?"

"Yeah…a few…I'm second guessin' invitin' your ass!" Trip teased, fists on his hips, "I also was tryin' to consider whether we should have pick a nice big church too. I also was tryin' to decide whether I should have Solan as my best man…"

Charles Jr. let out a scoffing chuckle, as Jon feigned outrage at the revelation.

"And those…are my second thoughts." Trip smirked.

Charles Jr. grinned at his son, "I'll give you the unvarnished truth son, when I was getting married to your mother, they almost had to pull me physically to the front of the church, I was scared as hell. I'm more'n a bit surprised you and T'Pol have done so well with each other."

Trip frowned, "Gee…thanks dad."

"Oh c'mon, it was hard enough to keep the girls off you when you did have your pants up, then you just go full stop with a Vulcan girl. Can you see where we'd all be a bit surprised?"

Trip couldn't help but smile now, not at his father's words, but the concept they engendered, "Because she's my one…all those years I was runnin' around lookin' for her and just didn' realize it."

Charles' face paled slightly as he remembered the conversation he'd had with Elaine and T'Les months before. The idea that the imprinting had been mutual was always possible, but there was something haunting and almost beautiful about the idea that his son had, on that day, found the woman he would love for the rest of his life and his entire childhood and adolescence had been a drive he couldn't grasp to find her. All those girls, all the flings, all of it was just some clumsy hormonal way to trying to find the woman that would fulfill that need for completion that was instilled in him when he was only a few months old. It was a love story for the ages, and part of him began toying with the idea of committing it to the written page.

* * *

><p>Hoshi turned back in the pew to look back out over the sea of dress whites in the relatively small church. There were quite a few members from the Tucker clan there, of them only Charles Tucker Jr. was clad in the dress whites of a CPO having been the former Command Master Chief of Whiting Field and Eglin after his time as a NSW special response operator at Canaveral and Whiting. The other uniforms were all from <em>Enterprise<em> and _Tirpitz_ as well a few who he had served with on the _Togo Heihichiro._ She, Malcolm, Travis, and Kelby had all come at the same time with Dr. Phlox in tow who had, inexplicably, opted to wear the officer Regalia of the Denobulan Territorial Guard Infantry from his time in service with their military. She further counted Commander Nasir Al-Sistani, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Snellis, Chief Petty Officer Wallace Glen, and a few dozen other junior officers and enlisted. She spotted a few Marines too, notably Major Musashibo Benkei, and General Lester. Next to the major was a gorgeous lieutenant that she resolved herself to get to know.

On the "Bride's Side" sat Erika Hernandez as the only other uniformed MCS officer besides herself, and a few Vulcan dignitaries from Sausalito. T'Pol's mother was noticeably absent, prompting Hoshi to lean over to Hernandez who had just pinned as Captain a few weeks before.

"Why do you think T'Pol's mother isn't here?"

Erika shrugged, "I imagine the trip from Vulcan to Earth is a pretty long one to make on short notice. We're the only people that are making the run in anything less than six days and if there isn't a ship redirecting from Vulcan with an open berth and no security concerns, it would be next week before she'd be here anyway."

"Couldn't they have put it off until then?"

Erika smirked slightly, "If you'll remember, his parents weren't invited to Vulcan for the first one."

"Okay, fair enough."

There were a few gasps at the back of the church that prompted both women to turn to look to see Solan tucker in a little suit and tie standing next to the huge sehlat which had a small pillow attached to the top of his head via a ribbon. The creature moved its head to look at his charge and moved its mouth making a series of low mewling yaps, causing the ring to fall off the pillow there, prompting the small demi-Vulcan to give the creature an exasperated look then bent down to pick the ring back up, dusting it off, then placing it back on the pillow, placing a hand on the creature's snout to prevent head movement which, in turn, just caused the smilidon to move its head again, causing the ring to once again fall off.

Hoshi watched in amused amazement as the child picked the ring back up and voiced some sort of protest at the 250 pound mass of muscle, fangs, and claws which chuffed at the admonishment. Solan stuck the ring in his pocket as he griped at the creature. In the same situation she knew she would be terrified, in the place of his parents she would be terrified what an apex predator like the sehalt would do to her child. But in the two was a perfect relationship, everything up front and stripped of pretense. The sehlat adored the little human/Vulcan and the child adored the creature in return. Needless to say some of the guests were alarmed by the huge creature and its eighteen centimeter long fangs. Some of the Vulcans though, seemed to be thoroughly mystified and a few rose from their seats to approach the sehlat and child.

Hoshi, feeling some sudden stab of maternal protectiveness also rose, walking over to where they stood should they begin to accost the child with questions for which he didn't have adequate answers. When she reached them they had already launched into a fusillade of questions in Vulcan. Hoshi was about to begin translating for the child who looked from one adult to another, a little smile forming on his face to the consternation of the assembled Vulcan adults.

"Kilko-tor linisaya wak-veh, nash-veh." He replied the little wry smile turning into a grin.

Hoshi felt like she needed to intercede when a Vulcan form came up behind the child. She looked up from his tiny face to see Ambassador Soval. The child sense the presence and turned to look up at the grey haired diplomat who looked down at the child with the same severe facial set of his people, but something almost kind in his eyes.

"Where did you learn to speak Vulcan, Solan? It was my understanding that there had been no attempt to teach you our tongue."

The child smiled wider, "Dada has been teaching me."

Soval arched a brow, "That would account for the artifacts in pronunciation."

"Dada says he has lazy consonant sounds." The child replied, prompting Hoshi to stifle a giggle.

"Are you prepared for your role in this ceremony?" The diplomat asked.

"I am, but teef keeps droppin' the wing!" The child protested, pulling the piece of jewelry from his pocket.

Soval knelt, prompting arched eyebrows from some of the assembled Vulcans, "It would perhaps be advisable to not place the ring on the cushion until it is time to approach the altar."

The child nodded, "Dat makes sense."

Soval rose and looked to Hoshi, prompting her to extend the Ta'al to the elder statesman, "Sochya eh dif, kevet-dutar"

"Good morning, lieutenant commander Sato." Soval looked around the chapel, "I had expected a larger venue, most of the human churches I have seen have been substantially larger than this."

"This would be considered a country parish, Ambassador, they tend towards the humble in terms of size and construction methods."

He nodded, "I see."

"This is more the rule than the exception in most of North America."

Soval looked to the front of the church, "I believe the groom is prepared."

Hoshi looked to the front of the chapel to see Trip standing before the Altar with Archer to his right, both immaculate in their dress whites but Trip's chest full of medals and ribbons making Jon's menagerie of achievements seem somehow puny and anemic. Hoshi returned to her seat just in time for the first chords of the wedding march to begin playing. She heard another round of gasps as she turned to see T'Pol waiting to begin her walk up the aisle with Ambassador Soval to her right. Hoshi couldn't help but gasp herself, she looked elegant and beautiful in the human dress which somehow only managed to give the barest hint of her being pregnant. For the first time in her life, Hoshi felt intensely jealous.

* * *

><p><em>Daaaaayyum, you look good in that.<em>

T'Pol cocked a brow at her mate as she took the slow steps down the aisle to the Altar. _Did your mother not comment that if you attempted any sexual behavior while I was wearing the dress she would divest you of your cranial epidermis?_

_Doe'n't mean you don't still look fantastic, hon._

_I find your appearance similarly appealing; however I believe I do look more visually pleasing in this situation. I note you are wearing award devices in addition to those you already had as part of the uniform._

_They fast tracked me for the cross, star, and DSM because, apparently, Soval thinks it'll look better if I look like a Christmas tree._

_K'diwa, should I be experiencing emotional turmoil?_

To his credit, his expression didn't change a bit, _Define turmoil…because if you're thinkin' about hot footin' it out of here I know for a fact I can run faster'n you._

_I am…nervous._

He smiled a bit more now but other than that his expression and stance didn't change. _Of course you are, I was nervous as hell when I had to fight Koss. Which, by comparison, this is a whole helluva lot easier, just stand there and look…blissful._

_I did not see the ring on the cushion on Teeths' head._

Trip's smile cracked to a grin for a second, _He kept lookin' at Solan and the ring kept droppin' off so he stuck it in his pocket._

_I attempted to convince the ambassador to have several of the individuals from the embassy to be armed with shot-guns but he, apparently, thought there would be objections to the idea._

Trip bit his lip to keep from laughing, forcing an arched brow from her, _So help me…if you make me laugh out loud in front'a everybody._

A third voice spontaneously wrung out in their minds, startling both of them and almost forcing a physical jerk from Trip, _Perhaps if you were to both cease your current communication and focus on the impending events of the ceremony, any mirth you might share could be negated._

_Ambassador?_ T'Pol inquired in a pinched tone.

_One of my fingers is in contact with your wrist, so apparently I have been made privy to your mate bond while the contact persists._

_I would advise that you relocated the finger in question._ T'Pol replied succinctly.

_To do that would require that I deviate from the prescribed actions as the one giving away the bride._

_We're not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with us!_ Trip replied with a faked mental growl.

_K'diwa, please, I am attempting to maintain composure now._

_Think about somethin' technical, it works for me._

_Like what, precisely?_ She protested.

_Transphasic Chroniton Torpedoes!_

Her brows arched, _What?_

_This borders on the absurd._ Soval sniped.

_Yeah, Transphasic Chroniton Torpedoes, that's the ticket!_

_Would six of them not be capable of destroying a class four planet?_

_Extremely destructive._ Trip affirmed.

_What precisely is a class four planet?_ The Ambassador sounded flustered now.

_Somethin' a Transphasic Chroniton Torpedo could destroy._

Trip was digging his fingernails into the heal of his hand now where he had his hands clasped in front of him, trying to fight down the urge to laugh.

_I am highly skeptical that such a device can or does exist._

_Five warheads would, allegedly, give an individual very bad gas. _T'Pol countered, codifying the nature of the devices.

Soval moved his finger, removing himself from the bond but not before cocking a quizzical brow at both Tucker then T'Pol. This was not a moment too soon as they reached the altar and should the conversation have continued he was partially certain that all three would have stood in utter silence for the next fifteen minutes debating the issue mentally regarding the clearly fictitious weapons capable of destruction on a scale that was immeasurable given the fact that there was nothing called a "class four planet" in accepted exogeological practice.

"The bond is a serious matter, not a thing for silliness." He mumbled to T'Pol and Tucker as the final chords of the bridal march played on the organ.

"You have clearly never been mated to a human." T'Pol countered as the pastor made his way in front of the couple and Soval moved to resume his seat at the pews.

The minister spread his arms wide, the clerical vestments looking strangely Vulcan to Soval as he began to speak in a loud ringing voice, "Dearly beloved…we are gathered here today in the sight of God and man to bring together Charles Anthony Tucker the third and T'Pol, daughter of T'Les, daughter of Solan, of the clan of Sokel together in holy matrimony…"

* * *

><p><strong>[!- AUTHOR'S NOTE -!]<strong>

**Okay, this part...at least...is not an April Fool's joke. This is now, and I mean it this time, the midway point for this story. So we're going to be looking at about 120 chapters over all. If these strikes you as a bit excessive, you can start bombarding me with hate mail and reporting the absolute bajeezus out of me for being triggering and a lousy editor of my own work. This is going to be the lone ray of sunshine chapter for a while so hang onto your gonads and strife because this ride is going to get bumpy.**


	61. Chapter 61

Looking off an into the distance, the maze of stars, the subtle tinges of gas clouds and nebulas, it brought back all the images he'd seen of distant galaxies, the old images of the Pillars of Creation, the last dying light of a stellar nursery that had died more than a thousand years before the images had ever been captured. The stunning and incomprehensible beauty of it, dozens of light years long but from a distance could be seen with such impossible shades and the licks of bright young main-sequence stars. It made him feel so small, so inconsequential. How could anything that he did, anything he aspired too, anything he believed in have more than the briefest and infinitesimal influence on the progression this great mechanism? How profound was the conceit, among all sentient life, that anything they did ended up mattering one iota over the long term. Even if humanity went on another million years, it was little more than a wink in the progression of epochs. In a million years…a billion year…what hint would there even be that he had ever existed, this his whole race had ever existed? And in these moments of incomprehensible and crushing sadness about one's worth, he felt the most free. He was a spark in creation, and even if nothing he ever did effected creation, it was proof of its existence.

Trip couldn't imagine what it must be like to not believe in a God of creation, some grand architect whose will and methods were so far beyond understanding that he quaked under the weight of it. There was too much perfection, too much beauty, too much primal wonder for it all to be the convergence of random events. If this were all a random combination, how many billions of do-overs had it taken? Was this all destined to start over again at some point? Would it all converge and begin again or would it all eventually fall to Lord Kelvin's heat death? In this moment, he couldn't help but feel that something higher, more important, more guided than him moved it all, beyond something like biological imperative. If God existed in the way he believed, then the one mandate that the most concrete hadn't come down from Sinai on a pair of tablets, it hadn't been some sourced from post-modernist philosophy; it was a single rote…keep moving, keep struggling, keep improving. It was this, and this belief alone, more than anything else that convinced him not to just step off into creation to become a part of it all in the progression of timelessness.

In this moment, he felt a God's love, for making him privy to all of these wonders, for creating a people who would never stand still to let the passage of time occur. In three years man would celebrate the 200th anniversary of their first foray into space, and in less time than it took his race to understand the oceans of their own world, they stood among the stars, travelling them at will.

Twenty three days ago _Tirpitz_ had slipped its moorings to make the short run over to 4 Vesta to rendezvous with the phase one mobility platform for Deep Space K7. In less than three days, just enough time for them to reach the rimward side of the Laurentian system to begin the implementation of K7, he would take over for the operational requirements of Task Group: Deguello running up and down Pi-Canis. T'Pol's last words before he'd boarded the heavy lifter up to LaGrange 1 had been, "Your sense of duty gives up pride, K'diwa. We will miss you and eagerly await your return."

She hadn't projected apprehension, reluctance, or misgiving, just a sort of strong adoration and pride in him that he was willing to do what so many others on his own planet or hers were willing to do. He'd kissed her, then knelt down to look at his son. Solan hadn't seemed to show the first bit of misgiving either, he looked at his father with a kind of stern stolidity on his face and said, "Go get'em Dada." This had brooked a big grin from Trip who mussed his hair, gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, then turned to enter the troop transport shuttle with seabag thrown over one shoulder and the deployer held in the opposite hand.

In a little less than eight hours, the task group would be arriving to rendezvous with _Tirpitz_ and four of the _Mississauga_ class destroyers, the _DeGuello_ and three of the _Ernest E. Evans_ class frigates would be staying behind to provide security for the station for the next two months. The two brand new _Baffin_ corvettes that had provided the tug capacity getting K7 out to its location would also undergo the at-sea-refitting to make them sea worthy for defense of the station and would be permanently assigned. In the meantime, Trip had decided on a few at-sea-refits of his own; namely a pair of external projection semaphore LED screens that would allow for simple flag signaling or Morse communication between ships when ULF or other forms of communication were not practical. Additionally, a pair of black flags were to be painted on the CIC command hump just fore of the rarely used observation cupola. In the history of MCS, any besieged command was referred to as Black Flag in a strange sort of defiance against those that had been foolish enough to attack them. It was a peculiar reversal, it promised no quarter for the attackers, not the defenders and the psychological effect it had on the MCS personnel was profound. It was a tacit expression of impending victory…never, for a moment, was a Black Flag command operating under the perception that it would fall. The courage and ferocity it engendered in the Marines and Sailors was so palpable that foes would end up feeling as though they were, themselves, besieged. For the duration of the _Tirpitz's_ cruise with the Pi-Canis patrol flotilla, the ship would serve as Black Flag for Task Group: DeGuello.

Tucker had taken the rather unconventional step of suiting up himself and making the EVA hull walk to supervise the installation of the LED signal system and the paint job. It was fine by him, he didn't get to do this sort of thing often enough anymore, and Kelby seemed so intent on correcting everything that Gibberti had either neglected or screwed up and optimize everything Cruz had implemented during his short tenure as division head. Trip had been intensely pleased at being able to get his hands on Kelby, and the former chief engineer of _Enterprise_ was more than excited about getting the chance at the engine room of the first of the _Iowa_ class ships. In his first few department head meetings with his former division second in command, Kelby had ladled praise on Cruz and codified the condemnation of Gibberti over the startlingly poor level of maintenance on the ship. Trip, himself, was a bit embarrassed over how much of it he had missed during his tenure as skipper, but Kelby had repeatedly reassured him that most of the issues where of the out-of-sight, out-of-mind variety.

Of course Kelby was chomping at the bit to get _Tirpitz_ up to Warp 9 and beyond, but the jog down to Pi-Canis had been limited to Warp 8 as the _Baffin_ class ships were still criminally untested and had the huge payload of K7 to contend with. Trip estimated that, given the availability of material, Kelby would have the power-plant refitted for Warp 9 constant running within three months, and then it would just be the matter of cracking the 9.5 question. With a jump of just two full factors above the original 7.5 rating they would effectively be traveling three times as fast, eight times faster than just about anyone else in the immediate area of space. He knew with Greg Kelby backing him up they would be pushing warp nine five soon, and in their collective brain storming they'd have a refit plan worked up for full implementation by block 3 of the _Iowa_ and Block 2 for the _Triumph_ and _Revenge_ classes.

"You stay in the drink too long and you'll prune up." Nasir's voice cut in over the intercom in the helmet.

"Yeah, you know what? Maybe I should float-check you over to Kilo seven." Trip quipped back to his XO, eliciting a chuckle from the Druze first officer.

"How's the view out there?"

"Absolutely amazing, it's like lookin' at creation, you should suit up'n come take a look." Trip turned his torso and head, looking out again at the array of stars and distant clouds of gasses glowing with the solar winds.

"I suppose we could actually start using the observation cupola every once in a while."

Trip shook his head to himself, "It's not the same, this…it's life changin', if you ever wanted to feel close to God, this is the way to go."

"Alhamdulillah." The XO stated with a reverent voice.

"Yep…" Trip paused taking it in once more, "So what's goin' on, I'm pretty sure you didn' pipe in just for a chat."

"The DeGuello contacted us to inform us of their distance and estimated time to arrival, they are currently within the projected time table."

"Was A. G. on the other end?" Trip asked, smirking to himself. Robinson had been noticeably absent in all the communications they had received from the Task Group. Trip couldn't help but feel as if he constituted the final insult to Robinson who had been considered a problem officer for a while now. The idea that he, who had been a Captain for well over a decade now, would be replaced by a man who had been one less than six years and had been given the newest and most powerful ship, arguably, in the quadrant had to chap his ass. Of course Robinson would have had to see the news reports of the wedding ceremony two months earlier. It had been another follow up story, but it had taken on a life of its own as media outlet after media outlet picked up the story and ran with it.

Of course, this time there had been less negativity than the story at Solan's birth, but there was still some subtle condescension in the reporting. This time it had mostly been to paint him as a War Monger and the experts who picked apart every detail of his uniform had done a fair job of providing a back-handed platform for Terra Prime isolationism. Of course, a lot of it seemed to sail right over the anchors' heads as they had marveled at the idea of the "war hero" and his Vulcan bride. There had been some debate about his uniform and the awards there-on, the question had been presented regarding his use of the NSW Eagle and Trident, the Command Ashore Trident Badge and The Command at Sea eagle and anchor. All of which had been quickly cleared up by other experts who pointed to his public record which indicated that Trip had been Command Ashore during the 47 war and again during the invasion of Vulcan, a special projects manager for the development and construction of _Tirpitz_, a task group commander for Operation: Linebacker, and that he had completed BUD/S, BED/S, SQT, and cross-trained with MARSOC.

"Negative, still zero traffic directly from Alpha Golf."

"Well…" Trip muttered as he bend down to close and resecure the surface power transfer junction into the modular attachment spine along the starboard weapons and mission critical component module section, "He's gonna have to talk to me soon'r later, so all he's doin' puttin' it off is puttin' me in a worse mood 'bout his disposition."

"I feel bound to inform you that it would not be appropriate for you to deck him, sir."

Trip could detect the mirth in his XO's voice, he half wanted to chuckle at it himself, but part of him was still riled about the way Robinson had behaved when _Tirpitz_ had first put in from its shake-down. Somewhere, sometime in the past several years Trip had finally found some vestige of self-worth that had managed to elude him, and now when he thought about how he'd been looked down on, insulted, it made him mad as hell, not mad enough to act on it, but he was more than willing to force Robinson to be in the uncomfortable position of acknowledging that he, Trip, was the better officer.

"I am so advised, Commander, I'll behave accordingly." Trip quipped back.

* * *

><p>Trip watched as A.G. Robinson seemed to squirm, not so much at the size of the cramped office, not at the uncomfortable chairs, but rather at the placards and decoration on the walls. Framed behind his desk Trip had a copy of the commendation, medal, and ribbon for each of his two Navy Crosses, his five silver stars, his two Distinguished Service Medals and the certificates that marked his graduation from the various special training courses from EOD to MCMAP, Naval Special Warfare to Advanced Warp Theory Applications, Officer Candidacy to MARSOC. It was considered customary for a commanding officer to so adorn his personal office to let it be a testament to his skill, intrepidity, and worthiness for the position. On the adjacent wall were signed copies of letters from General Bill Kim, Admiral Black, General Lester, the Vulcan High Command, and the UEN Secretary General. There was a picture of him in full Dress Whites with Admiral Archer, Captain Hernandez, Hoshi, Malcolm, and Travis. Another featured both him and Nasir Al-Sistani in dress whites alongside Major Musashibo and Lieutenant Pritchard in their Marine blue and white dress. On his desk, for him personally, he had a picture of T'Pol and Solan with Teeth sitting on his haunches beside his son.<p>

"When you first ended up on the Togo, I never could have guess we'd be here today." Captain Richard Benson, commanding officer of the _Merritt A. Edson_ declared with a grin on his face. Benson had been first CO back in 47 when he'd been stationed to the _Togo Heihachiro _as a Naval Special Warfare landing team lieutenant.

"If you'd told me I'd have told ya you were crazy, sir." Trip declared, having a hard time breaking the habit of thinking of the seasoned skipper as anything but his superior.

"Don't get too in the habit of calling me sir, captain Tucker, this is your party now." Benson declared with a wink and a nod.

"Oh hell, Dick, you're always gonna be my first CO, ain't a thing that can take that away." Trip grinned back.

Rumors held that Benson had chafed under Robinson and as a result had been sortied back to Earth with Robinson's recommendation that he be divested of command. Of course none of this jived with Benson's war record, he wasn't the hard charger Al-Sistani was, the leader of men that Archer was, or even the lunatic that Trip himself was, but Dick Benson was a competent commander and had the right mix of judicious and intrepid that one wanted from a skipper. His only failing was that nothing about him particularly stood out, he wasn't stupidly brave, anally by-the-book, or hyper-political. He kept his head down, did his job, did his duty like what was expected of him, like all that could be expected of a Naval officer.

A few of the more junior commanders who captained the compliment of _Missisauga_ class destroyers grinned, doubtlessly please to be posted under a commanding officer whose reputation had grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years. There was an ornate tapestry of legends revolving around Trip and he was willing to entertain them to a certain degree because it keep him larger than life and in the context of leading a command in hostile territory, it helped morale to believe you were serving with an Olympian Hero tier individual.

That wasn't to say he wouldn't correct misinterpretations and inflated stories if asked, he would be truthful with those who were serving under and along-side him, but he wasn't going to tell them what to believe if the idea that Tucker had; killed 100 Klingons single-handed during the 47 war, repelled a Xindi boarding action leading his engineering division with nothing but a wrench and a cutting torch, slept with a female of thirty different races, been declared a royal consort on Krios, thrown back a company sized Romulan assault with nothing but his side-arm, designed every upgrade MCS had implemented for the past thirteen years, completed twenty five combat UHALO jumps, and seduced and wedded a Vulcan. There was an element of truth in all of them, but the numbers and grandiosity of each claim was at least partially, and usually incredibly, inflated.

Besides…T'Pol had seduced him, and they were in complete agreement that is exactly what had happened.

She had been a joy to be around all of those three months, every day something a bit more unique and interesting about her character seemed to emerge, at the moment some of it was very trying as her mood swings were rather pronounced but she always had the most amusing and non-direct way of showing her contrition when her attitude had been its most trying. On several occasions she had pulled up files from the Vulcan Science Academy Archives at Sausalito that detailed the way pregnant and hormonal female Vulcans could become intractable and stood behind him as he read the article, upon completing it he would turn and she would give him her best doe eyes, her way of saying "I'm sorry" without saying "I'm sorry." On another occasion she had written up a legal contract explaining that his acceptance of the verbal mandate to "put a baby in" her had given his tacit agreement to accept any behavior that would fall into the categories, "cranky, bitchy, obstinate," and "pain-in-the-ass." He laughed to himself when he read it, not so much for her self-deprecating vernacular but the fact it went on for six pages. Another time she brought him a sandwich. He cocked a brow at her and pointed and she replied, "It is an 'I am sorry' sandwich, this absolves me from actually having to voice contrition."

Of course, with the mood swings came other things, like the fact she had been an absolutely unrepentant horn-dog the whole time too. Between those three months and her pon-farr they had probably had more sex than they had their previous four years together. He had experienced at least some reservation about the amount of sex they were having when, after one particularly lively hours long session of on-and-off copulation, she had cocked a brow at him and said, "It is not as if I am capable of becoming _more_ pregnant."

Trip looked at the assembled officers, making a point of overlooking Robinson who was seated directly opposite him while the other stood. "I like to keep things runnin' in a reaction squadron set-up, _Tirpitz_ acts as anchor point to either spearhead or support as the situation dictates. Missile boat skippers are actin' squadron leads, so y'all are gonna be followin' Cap'n Benson and Cap'n Hogue's lead, un'erstand?"

Many of the younger commanders nodded, there was a culture of pride almost to the point of being a chip-on-the-shoulder with the Frigate and Destroyer crews. They were too often overshadowed by the cruisers they were tasked to support and with a ship like _Tirpitz_ in the mix, it was easy for them to think they were redundant and unnecessary. Trip knew better, a big ship like _Tirpitz_ was base of fire or the intimidating presence that caught the enemy's attention, this allow the speed and maneuverability of the smaller _Missisauga_ and _Ernest E. Evans_ class ships to play at their best, hooking in on long obliques to lay fire into an enemy's flanks or prevent their attempts at feint and maneuver. It meant attack boat skippers got to act like attack boat skippers, engines wide, impulse to full, deck plates rattling and lights flickering as you put smoke on your foes. They were no longer out here to absorb fire meant for the CGs, they were out here to be hunter-killers and it felt good, he could see it written on them.

"Operating dictum is gonna be semi-autonomous, we'll be runnin' a spread, up'n'down the cordon no more'n thirty minutes at maximum practical warp from the next squadron position. We're pullin' a higher maximum effective speed so we're gonna wander a bit further, but we'll make sure we're no further away'n thirty minutes at warp niner one." Tucker declared.

"Sir, you're pulling warp nine?" One of the Commanders sounded mesmerized.

"Yeah, we got it worked out 'bout nine months ago, and you gen'lemen'll be happy t'know I've got my old num'er two engineer back so we're gonna be gettin' under-way expedient solutions to punch y'all up to at least eight point one, possibly beyond." Tucker smirked, as he watched the looks go between the officers, the idea of pulling eight point one instead of the maximum emergency speed of seven point five seeming a quantum leap in their range and mobility. "Also, we got somethin' worked out to thread our P-Keck, so every sailor in the task group is allotted forty-five minutes a week of priority quantum entanglement comms back earth side."

Captain Hogue's brows arched, "Every sailor…all the boats, really, Captain Tucker?"

"Roger that, dependin' on our distance from the boat at the time there could be up to three seconds delay, but we've figured out a way to thread signals comin' through our P-keck so we can accept up to fifteen streams at any given time. I'm gonna leave it up to the squadrons to determine who gets comms time and when, but there's gonna be fourteen open channels for quantum comms every minute of up-time we have on the p-keck which should be at least twen'y three hours a day."

Hogue shook his head a little, "Captain, you just improved task group morale by nine hundred percent."

"It's not a popularity contest, Tucker." Robinson groused, finally unable to take the fact he was already being relegated to an unpleasant memory for much of the task group.

"A crew with good morale is an effective crew, Alan." Tucker fired back, using Robinson's actual first name, something he hated, a calculated insult.

Robinson didn't know when to take the hit, when to shut up, when to know he had been outplayed, "Is that what you do? Coddle your crew? I didn't realize this was day-care…or maybe that's how you get them to overlook it when you get your wife carried out to your boat so you can play fuck party for five days on end."

Tucker didn't bite, he just smirked, "Way I remember it, my coddled crew has more surface engagements in the year'n a half I've been skipper than you've had in your whole eighteen. I also seem to remember you bein' on the Rigellian trade corridor in forty seven, sea trials for the DeGuello when we were in the expanse, and campin' out here when the Romulans got froggy."

It was a damning indictment, one for which Robinson had no retort, it wasn't as if Trip wanted to pick a fight, but if there was going to be residual pecking order issues for this task group and any attempt to impugn his ability to lead it, he was going to shut it down immediately. In all honesty he could take anything Robinson could dish out at him personally, one glance back at the wall behind him would shut any argument like that down, but any accusation leveled at _his_ crew and, possibly, his wife was over a line Tucker was not willing to tolerate. Still, to do it with a smile rather than a sneer was the better way to go.

Robinson seemed to lack anything approaching couth or political acumen, "You want to drop the rank and settle this like men, Tucker? Or is being a man an alien concept to you?"

"I dunno, Alan, you willin' to hedge on the casualty response readiness of your boat?" Trip inquired with a sort of nonchalance that hinted that he didn't find the more senior captain the first sort of threat.

Robinson stood, slamming his hands on Trip's desk then his eyes drifted up to the MCMAP commendation on the wall, complete with symbolic black belt with the tan instructor stripe running perpendicular. It declared that not only had he achieved a high level of mastery, he could teach those same skills, and this made him even more dangerous. Robinson glanced back down to Tucker whose expression had gone from unimpressed to suddenly very severe. The junior captain lifted his hand, his fingers tight together in a knife-hand gesture which he pointed at him.

"You're in my office, on my boat, so you can stow that shit right now or I'm gonna stow it for you, then float check you back over to DeGuello, you track?" Tucker rose from his chair, the hand still pointed at him, "As a matter of fact, you're not even necessary for this conversation, flag transfer authorization is right there in fronta you, pick it up and unass my AO."

A.G. faltered, he was effectively powerless now, it was Tucker's detail, his flotilla, he didn't need a star or the title of commodore, the titles A.G. enjoyed were worthless now, flag authorization had passed him, and while he could wear the brevet title until he got back to Earth, his mandate was over. There Tucker stood, in his NWU blouse and trousers, the sleeves rolled up to mid-bicep showing off thick musculature that one normally did not think of from a Flag Officer, and once again Jon's haunting words came back, "We're the pogues." Jon had gotten his star, Tucker could go anywhere in this man's navy and fit right in, his choice of postings, his choice of positions, the total MCS package, word was JSSCG had even been talking to him of late. With that kind of heavy butt behind him, Tucker could barrel his way through just about anything he wanted too, and here he stood, A.G. Robinson, one of the most reviled captains in MCS. Even if he did the stupid thing, clocked Tucker as hard as he could, he was partially certain now that'd he'd just manage to break his hand on Tucker's jaw before the junior captain summarily disassembled him for everyone in the office to see. At this moment, there was nothing else to fall back onto but the one thing he'd avoided most of his adult life; humble dignity.

"I apologize for my outburst, Captain Tucker; I clearly overstepped my bounds, by your leave?"

Trip's expression softened, "I accept your apology, Captain Robinson, you are dismissed, sir."

With that Robinson picked up the flag authorization folder and before he could extend a salute, Tucker lifted his own right hand in a salute, it could be the final insult or a conciliatory move. The other officers mimicked the action, leaving Robinson the recognized senior officer if for only a few moments, a sort of last hurrah as it were. Robinson returned the gesture, allowing the group of captains, commanders, and their new overall CO to lower their hands, and with that he turned and left the office.

* * *

><p>Archer stared out the observation copula at LaGrange 1 at the progress on the <em>Triumph<em> class hull. It was starting to look like a starship now, and with the rate of progress it was pretty clear that the boat would actually be ready inside six months having had its keel laid not even five months prior. The modular component design had really done wonders for construction, entire sections were pre-constructed, moved into place, tacked in, and connected to all sub-systems before the layers of armor were put in. On this very day they were installing the pairs of 225mm rail guns dorsal and ventral on the saucer section and the weapons hovered above and below their respective connection areas like some great exploded diagram. Unlike the battleships, the _Triumph_ was intended as a fast dueler rather than the all out brawler the _Iowa_ class was designed to be. These were the big guns, rather than batteries of the smaller rail guns they were supplemented by phased energy canon arrays that would be less depended on ammunition and provide a roughly analogous level of punch at short and medium ranges.

"She's really coming together…" Archer marveled.

Erika did little more than grunt, "Still, we're going to have our asses hanging out at K seven for the better part of four months before you show up."

"C'mon, give me a break, there's going to be seven boats on the security cordon for K seven plus the two Baffins."

"Four…months….all by my lonesome, I've gotten too used to the on-demand sex Jon." She declared in a voice just loud enough to cause Archer to look around for who might have overheard.

"Can you keep it down?" He hissed.

"Four months…with nothing but a battery operated battle buddy."

Archer rolled his eyes, "Are you drunk?"

"Should I be?"

"I didn't make up the deployment schedule." He frowned, "Besides, I'm going to be out there inside five weeks of your arrival on the _Slade Cutter_. Once the new _Enterprise _is done and it makes the jog out, I'll be transferring my flag there."

She frowned back at him, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't find out until two days ago." He countered.

"So you had forty eight hours of prior knowledge and didn't tell me a thing?"

Jon smirked, "I'm sorry, when did they pin your star on?"

She turned back to the copula, knowing she would have a time winning this round facing that kind of haymaker, "Okay, fine, you win this one."

"Only this one? By my count I've won a few dozen."

Erika grinned, "I'm just choosing to ignore all of them."

That had been three months ago, and having taken up command of K-7 Erika had found that being the facility provost had presented an endless stream of tasks and responsibilities. She was beginning to realize everything had been cobbled together with a sort of expedience that bordered on flash-in-the-pan. When the initial setup had been completed there was literally less than 25% of environmental functioning. The billeting areas and an impromptu galley had life support, but for three weeks the skeleton crew that had come with the _Baffin_ tugs had had to use wet-wipes to bathe while everything was being finished.

Finished…yeah, right.

Even now only 49% of the station was up to muster, environmental control was, mercifully, running at 100% but there were still large sections of the ship where wall panels weren't in place, EPS grids weren't complete, a few of the sanitary facilities lacked either toilets or sinks. So far the only area that was at full staff was the engineering and operations divisions who were, in effect, completing the construction of the station now that it was already in place. They were in a relatively leisurely slow orbit seventy three AU from the system's star, jogging at an orbit rate of one full rotation of the sun every two hundred thirty eight years by current figures of their velocity. The system's one habitable planet sat 1.36 AU from the system's star and could be reached in as few as ten minutes with in-system warp protocols. The _Pittsburg_ had made a run over to the world and conducted some initial scans but so far, there seemed to be no interest or expedient need to study it further.

Every few weeks, another group of freighters would arrive and drop off components and materials for the further completion and expansion of the station. The stated goal was that within five years the station would be able to service up to a dozen ships and their crews with a full RCT of Marines on hand for quick reaction. The permanent security squadron would consist of five boats, all of them _Baffin_ class with the Pi-Canis Flotilla close enough to respond to any major incident. Up to six _Ernest E. Evans_ and _Mississauga_ class ships would be sortied at squadron size from the station at any given point and all of them could give way for any incoming fleet or task groups if needed. They would be carrying 1.5 million cubic meters of anti-deuterium in storage and 500 thousand cubic meters of deuterium. Their stores could hold 350 type 51 missiles, 1680 photonic torpedoes, 5700 rounds of M876 90mm Rail Gun ammunition, 3850 rounds of the M171 125mm ammunition, and 455 rounds of the M951 225mm rounds that had just been entered into the TO&E. The station had storage for 9580 tons of food stuffs, 38,750 tons of trade goods and raw materials, billeting for up to 16,700, six medical facilities, 13 surgical theatres, within a year they would be adding a morale, welfare, and recreation section for component crews. The station had been designed mimicking the concessions made in the _Iowa_ and _Triumph_ class to keep water in between deck sections and module walls allowing for 16.8 million gallons of water at their disposal with 12 plants to reprocess and clean water, feeding waste into the mulchers that reprocessed food and human waste into soil for the 3 hybrid hydroponics gardens that would provide a constantly supply of unprocessed air and food stuffs to supplement protein synthesizers and the new experimental replicators.

Thirteen hours ago a supply convoy had contacted K-7 to update their ETA. Six ships from a Japanese interstellar shipping firm were moving 275,000 tons of material and components for the docking gantries and repair facilities but they had encountered some issues skirting the Briar Patch and only three of the ships were still on schedule but they were slightly off course. It was no surprise to Erika, these things happened, ships sometimes still got lost, it was no shock they got thrown a bit off navigating the perpetually changing edges of the massive navigational hazard. It would probably take the better part of a week to get everything offloaded and accounted for and she estimated that Jon would be back in the _Cutter_ to help facilitate the completion of the process. He had taken the ship along with the _Boston _and _Hanoi_ down to link up with Trip while he took the _Tirpitz_ in close to the Ganalda corridor to monitor the increased ship traffic in the region. Jon was keeping the engines on the older ships low to avoid pushing the aged space frames when it wasn't an emergency. The jog to catch up to the _Tirpitz_ had been done at warp seven even though Tucker's people had at-sea refit the boat for warp 8.1, the jog back was at Warp 6 after spending three days on station taking readings of the ships moving in and out of the corridor. When Jon had commed her last night he promised he was bringing back pictures of Trip and T'Pol's baby daughter who was now just shy of five months old.

The operations command for K-7 was huge; Landing Signal Officers dotted the perimeter, a whole cadre of Communication crew manned the seventy five operating channels for the station and monitored the five PQECCs that K-7 enjoyed. Security, fire control, operations and repair oversight, all of it, some fifty total personnel and 12 Fleet Marines were in the large round room, dotted with three massive holo-tanks, consoles, screens, and five foot high projection screens designed to give a panoramic view of outside the station.

"Ma'am, we're getting traffic on emergency channels three and eight." Petty Officer Third Class "Bucky" Lackland declared, snatching her attention.

"Put it through, mister Lackland."

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the Earth Freighter Kobayashi Maru, we have come under attack, requesting assistance, I repeat; mayday, mayday, mayday this is the Earth Freighter Kobayashi Maru, we have come under attack, requesting assistance."

Erika had already slipped on a head-set to reply, "This is Deep Space Kilo Seven, we copy Kobayashi Maru, please state number and disposition of attackers."

"Kilo Seven, we track six Klingon warships, holding at five thousand kilometers, they have crippled the Yushin Maru and have fired on the Akira Maru, request assistance. Yushin Maru has multiple hull breaches, the Akira Maru is leaking atmosphere and the last pass knocked out our warp engines."

Before she could speak a third voice cut in on a linked channel, "Hernandez, I can get out there with five ships in ninety minutes."

It was A.G. Robinson, his boats had been hanging in the area until their recall came, and for Robinson who hadn't gotten to fire a shot in anger…ever…this had to be the chance of a lifetime, maybe his last chance to actually do what he'd been trained to do for years.

"Slade Cutter, Slade Cutter, this is Kilo Seven, come back, over."

Jon's voice came over the line, "This is the Cutter, send traffic."

"Roger that Slade, we have three freighters under attack by Klingon forces four point eight light years distance, Commanding Officer DeGuello requests permission to respond with his squadron."

There was a moment of pause, "Any count on the hostile ships?"

"At least six." Erika declared.

Jon was quiet just a moment, "Cut A.G. loose, I will rendezvous to provide support."

She let out a silent sigh of relief, Jon had been in battle, A.G. and the two destroyers supporting him could not say the same, Jon could swing things in their favor but she was questioning the odds just a little, "I copy, will relay orders."

Before she could key back over to Robinson's squadron a familiar voice in an unfamiliar tone came over the emergency broadcast channel, "Kobayashi Maru, this is Black Flag actual, U.S.S. Tirpitz, E T A, zero four minutes, hold fast. I repeat, U.S.S. Tirpitz, E T A zero four mikes, hold fast."


	62. Chapter 62

"Range to target four one one kilometers, bearing three one niner mark one five three, speed point zero zero three one eight charlie."

"Put smoke on that mother fucker, HE quick."

When Nassir Fuad Al-Sistani started swearing, it was a good indication of the mood. He never swore in passing, in casual conversation, he was never told lewd jokes, rarely laughed if he overheard them, he certainly didn't use euphemistic language relating to adult subjects, so when he referred to the Klingons as he had, it was a clear sign he was murderously angry.

"Aye sir, setting demil, HE quick."

"Send it!" Al-Sistani barked.

Lights flickered in the CIC, monitors and screens, for a moment, shuddered as the massive electromagnetic pulse of the 225mm cannons sent the 198kg lance of ultra-dense alloy rocketing outward at one hundred five kilometers per second. The heavy Klingon cruiser wheeled to starboard trying to clear the fire-lane but the three and a half seconds it took the projectile to close the range was not nearly enough for the thrusters to sluggishly creep the ship clear of sight picture of the huge gun. The 441 pounds of Osmiridium and ferrus magnetite struck the large aft section of the Klingon warship, punching an enormous three meters hole at the point of entry before exploding a sixteenth of a second later just shy of the belly plating, the velocity of the projectile, the super-heated spall, and the force of decompression blew the lower after section out in a sudden gout of burning atmosphere, metal, plastic, and corpses. They must have struck the Klingons' powerplant as deuterium and anti-deuterium cooked off sending gouts of plasma shooting out of the exit and entry wounds, the licks of livid orangey energy dancing through cracks and shattered portholes up the and down the ship in time with all the lights dying. The ship listed and began to drift as the thrusters cut at an uneven rate. The force of the expelled matter and the impact itself providing enough thrust to tip the bow downwards as the dead craft was carried along on the inertia.

Small pieces of debris; hull plating, support structures, consoles, EPS conduits…Klingons…were floating into the debris field of the _Yuushin Maru_, to become intermixed with the human ship they had destroyed, a bizarre twist of fate that had the assailant join the victim in cosmic infinity as molecules became ensnared by one another to float off into emptiness to be joined with others, divided, or smashed into nothingness. It was a peculiar and melancholic sort of justice.

"Get me a solution on the next cruiser and fire, HE quick." Nassir growled, not even taking a moment to admire the handiwork.

"Aye sir, range to target, niner three five kilometers, bearing zero four eight mark six three zero, speed point zero zero niner five Charlie."

"One round, HE quick." Nassir ordered.

"Aye sir, demil, HE Quick."

"Send it."

Over near the damage control center Andy Snellis held a receiver in his hand set to the 2 MC, relaying information, "Five crews, prep for transport to friendly contacts, optimal life support gear, be advised, friendly ships likely have multiple hull breaches."

Tucker, seemed bizarrely staid, standing next to sensors and electronic warfare, calmly relaying a series of commands to the X-ray telescopic system, "I want you to put a tight band across the freighters, maximum range output."

The petty officer turned to look at his commander with a confused expression, "What are we looking for sir?"

"We'll know in a second, tight band, maximum wattage."

"Aye sir, beginning sweep, should we even be looking at the output?"

Tucker shook his head, "Just make sure output maintains," He turned over to the passive sensor station, "Check for X-Ray density fluctuations."

"Aye, sir." The crewman remained silent a moment, "Sir, I have five high density anomalies bouncing X-ray."

"Radiological, plot those points as targeting solutions and fire." Trip shouted.

The phase cannons erupted almost a split second before the confirmation call came from the atomic weapons division, "Sir, aye, firing."

The beams intersected hard with the anomaly, energy and feedback dancing across a hemispheric expanse of space a hundred or so meters across, the colors casting a momentary highlight against the shape of a hull, the long lines and sweeping wings self-explanatory.

"Missile control, plot those impacts, load Starfish and fire." Snellis bellowed from over near damage control, preempting the captain's order.

"Give 'em more of the same, keep that site picture." Tucker declared.

The 1 MC squawked, "All hands, brace for impact, say again, brace for impact."

Trip turned to see Nassir on the hand-set in the center of the CIC and quickly adjusted his gaze to the holo-tank which showed a sizable portion of…something…coming from the direction of one of the two Klingon heavy cruisers. It only took a moment for him to realize it _was_ the cruiser, or at least a very large piece of it as the LIDAR painted little pictures of debris that could only be the rest of the ship from where the second shot from the 225 railgun had either split the ship into pieces or touched off their torpedo magazine.

"Set fuse to manual detonation for all starfish." Snellis declared while simultaneously reaching up to grab one of the heavy duty hand-holds coming from the low-ceiling around the CIC's middle ring.

"Aye, sir. Package deployed."

A pair of blips appeared on the holo-tank, moving out from the center towards the plotted pair of X-ray anomalies that were currently showing in red with a dashed white outline indicating they were subject to fire from _Tirpitz_.

"Detonate on my mark." Tucker declared as he braced one hand against the side of the X-Ray telescopy station. From where he stood he glanced over to the camera display at missile control, the image coming from the nuclear missiles showing mostly just empty blackness with small objects in the image, likely distant stars, jumping around as Vernier thrusters kept adjusting the weapon's course. He immediately looked back over to the LIDAR display in the holo-tank as small numbers indicating range to target and bearing on the small missiles constantly updated.

"Two klicks, pop 'em. Mark!"

"Aye sir."

The signal from the cameras abruptly cut out reading "Ordnance expended" with the serial number and inventory number of the weapons displayed as there was a small bloom of light on the Holo-tank. The radiological alarm squawked a quick three tones, indicating nuclear detonation at range less than 1000 kilometers but outside the 100 kilometer engagement zone and the 25 kilometer danger area.

"Sir, I register four enemy craft, now on sensors."

The cloaking fields around the ships dropped as the sudden massive electro-magnetic feed-back of the detonations scrammed the devices powering them. The shields on the Bird of Prey type craft sputtered visibly as they attempted to compensate for feedback and fail-over circuits cut in to bring the energy shielding and navigational deflection field back online.

"Radiological, lock solution and fire, continue fire until targets neutralized." Trip ordered.

Nassir was hunting another target, bringing hands down to grab a railing just long enough to keep from being knocked off his feet as the Saucer smashed into what was left of one of the heavy cruisers. There was a creaking sound through the ship and a dull grating sound like a needle on glass as the steel of the Klingon ship scraped the surface of the battleship's heavy armor.

"Damnit, Nassir, you're gonna have to fix that yourself." Tucker quipped eliciting chuckles from a few on the bridge. It was emblematic of the severe disconnect of combat, how men could make jokes, exhibit moments of brevity, even as hundreds of souls moved on to meet whatever fate awaited them. There was that old saying "I have to laugh to keep from crying" and in no kind of situation was it truer than during war where the split second decision of to fire or not to fire could spell the doom of hundreds, thousands even.

The Klingons didn't deserve the pity; they had fired without hesitation, destroying the _Yuushin Maru_ without pity or any sign of remorse, these Klingons had signed up to kill, and that made them privy to the same sanction, whatever sorrow could be felt for the civilians aboard the freighter could be overridden by hatred towards those that had divested them of their most fundamental property; their lives. At the same time, the blood thirst, the rage, the righteous indignation had to be tempered or you could beat a sharp blade dull, it had to be wielded as a surgeon wields a Liston, and in order to effectively do so it was necessary to keep the emotions of his crew honed. If you could laugh at a joke while you killed, you became a machine operator, it was easy at that point to say it wasn't your choice to kill; it was kinetic energy's fault for interacting with the target. In the moment of the battle, it was necessary, at times, to be able to make the disconnect so that the job could be done. There would be time later for the moral introspection and internalized anguish of having killed after it was all done and over with.

The phaser batteries lashed out at the previously cloaked targets, transfixing them upon the long solid beams then showering them with darts of condensed energy.

"I'll just get a fine shammy and buff it right out, skipper." Nassir replied, a smirk creasing his face just to disappear as quickly, matching the look of almost complete soul amputation on Trip's face and in his eyes.

"Get me track on those Klink frigates." Snellis declared to missile control as he crossed to the holo-tank, eyeing the quartet of medium contacts that had been sitting in formation with the heavy cruisers. The fast ships had moved out into a wide sweep when _Tirpitz_ had dropped out of warp and had quickly tried to outdistance the railguns the second they saw what they had done to the first Heavy Cruiser.

"Sir, range to targets, in excess of twenty five hundred kilometers."

"Think they're planning on making a run for it, skipper?" Snellis inquired, looking over to Tucker.

"Probably linin' up for a pass, massed fire, they either think they can drop our shields or hit one of the other freighters." He turned back to radiological then to electronic warfare, "Status on my targets?"

"Sir, we're detecting a spike in the power plant on contact two, she's losing containment, contact three is adrift, multiple hull breaches and losing power, contact one has minimal life support, minimal engines, nothing to shields and weapons."

"And contact four?" Tucker prompted.

"Destroyed, sir."

X-Ray telescopy had detected five anomalies, but the Starfish had only popped four, there was still at least one out there, plus the four fast-attack frigates, as long as their attention was diverted solely to _Tirpitz_, this still counted as a fair fight and part of him was willing to engage in a little jousting, if only to give the Klinks something to think about and radio back home in horror over, but if just one more shot hit one of the freighters…

"Sir, two more contacts decloaking, they're firing on the Akira Maru!"

Well, that answered that…

* * *

><p>It was all over by the time they had arrived. They had opened the engines wide pushing up to warp 8.3 for a very choppy thirty minutes trying to reach the battle site but it had been unnecessary. The last report from the engagement had been when Trip declared the Klingons had finished off the <em>Yuushin Maru<em> the moment _Tirpitz_ had dropped out of Warp. The indications were that the Klingons ships had been attempting to toy with the Freighters long enough to get some MCS craft in for relief, probably so they could ambush them in turn with the six additional craft that had been waiting cloaked to support the group of four raptors and two heavy cruisers. When they had dropped out of Warp it had been just in time to see _Tirpitz_ finishing off one of the crippled Klingon ships with a burst of fire from one of the ventral 90mm Railgun batteries. It was an execution, the Klingon ship was crippled, engines offline, venting atmosphere in a great huge plume from the gaping hole in the drive section where one of the massive 225mm guns had ripped an opening the size of a two story house through the ship. The resultant debris trail extended for some thirty kilometers before it ended in a sudden cloud of fragments where the demilitarization charge went off.

_Tirpitz_ herself was skulking around the area, doing slow lazy orbits of the _Kobayashi_ and _Akira Marus_ while the two freighters cloistered themselves together, surrounded by repair pods and shuttles from the Battleship that seemed to be circling like an angry den mother around her cubs. There was almost something hungry in the way the ship moved, as if the vessel itself had not yet slaked its thirst for destruction and death. But what if it wasn't the ship itself, what if it was her captain? A ship was an extension of those who occupied it, for all the armament and armor, weapons and defensive capability, a ship was an extension of the will of its crew, not vice-versa.

Trip was bloodthirsty…not _Tirpitz_.

When the shower of 90mm UHDKEPs ripped into and through the Klingon cruiser he'd started to shout to himself to check fire, but there was no use, even if he could get _Tirpitz_ right that second, the demil command couldn't be input before the ordnance hit and he watched with a sort of morbid amazement as the Klingon ship seemed to just sort of come apart like tissue paper submerged in water as the incomprehensible energy created when twenty kilograms of material traveling at seventy five thousand meters per second struck a stationary object caused metal to melt support structures to shatter, and near-vacuum to do what nature bade it to do. If anything at all had been alive on that ship, from person to animal to microbe…it wasn't now. What atmosphere was left flash ignited from the tremendous amount of energy and friction and there was a quick puff of flame that seemed to come from every corner of the ship just to disappear as quickly.

Archer lifted the old fashioned phone-like comm receiver and spoke, "Black Flag, Black Flag, check fire, repeat, check fire."

The ship had just begun wheeling on one of the other hulks and while it continued on its course in the smooth turn, the guns did not track onto the vessel.

"We copy Cutter, Wilco."

"Black Flag, please inform actual that Admiral Archer needs to speak to him." Jon declared, looking over to the _Slade Cutter's_ Captain and XO.

There was a pause, then the voice he recognized but always seemed so different when he was going fivey responded, "This is Black Flag actual."

Archer lowered his voice, bringing a hand up to cover the mouthpiece of the receiver, "Trip…what the hell is going on, that ship was dead in the water, why did you keep firing?"

"I deemed it to be of strategic importance to ensure their casualties were as close to one hundred percent as possible, sir." Trip replied, his voice seemed strangely disconnected.

"Trip…" he swallowed, a sudden tightness and dryness in his throat, "are you alright?"

"We have zero casualties here, sir. Yushin Maru lost all hands except for two. Akira Maru has eighty percent casualties, sixty percent of them fatal. Kobayashi Maru has fifteen dead, eighteen wounded. Klingon casualties total to five hundred eight dead, seventy six alive, presumed wounded."

Archer ran a hand across his forehead, Tucker sounded completely detached and at least some small vestige of tamped down aggression in his voice seemed to indicate he thought the seventy six Klingons still alive was seventy six too many. As near as he could remember, Trip had never mentioned the forty seven war to him, never really mentioned it to anyone. Of the original naval component crew of _Enterprise_ only Rostov had been on the actual ground during the war, and that had been with the Seabees, well behind the lines of the fighting building rear bases and supply transport hubs. Only three or four of Hayes' Marines had been there either, most were either too young or were too busy with the training to gain a position in MARSOC to have done any fighting. By February of 48 it was all done and over with anyway, and it left a relatively small cadre of people who had seen it all at its worst, of which Trip was probably the only person he knew personally.

Before he could say anything one of the crippled Raptors, little more than a few major intact pieces of what was once a warship suddenly began to list as a barely visible jet of gas began to eject from the long head-and-neck section. A few seconds later the side split open entirely, ripping the section wide like a split peapod and spilling what was left of…everything…out into space.

"Check last, five hundred twenty nine dead, fifty five alive, presumed wounded." Tucker declared.

"What was that?" Archer asked, suddenly feeling a bit queasy at the way Trip seemed to just casually write off the deaths as numbers.

"Either a demil charge didn't go off when intended or the hull structure just failed, sir."

Archer swallowed again, "Trip…are you alright? You fired on a crippled ship…we don't do that!"

"They didn't have any such compunction sir, and seein' as how they were combatants and the freighter they blew wa'n't, they had to prepare to accept the reality that they would still be viewed as viable from a personnel or materiel once they fired shots, sir."

There was a twisted mote of logic in that assessment, it drew even further into the tight beam of focus when one considered that the Klingons, themselves, only responded to, reacted to, and respected reciprocal levels of brutality. During the 47 war it had taken nothing short of 85% loss of men and materiel to force them to curtail their aggression. There was also the grim precedent of responding asymmetrically to aggression brought against civilians. Granted, the freighters were transporting materials that where, on the face of it, intended for military use, but there were ways to deprive MCS of the logistical and strategic advantage these items provided that didn't require the outright murder of the crews of the ships.

"Trip, I need you to respond to me clearly, do you realize that you fired on a ship that could not defend itself." He had to see if he was still even in his right mind.

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Do you realize that MCS considers that conduct unbefitting and officer?"

"Yes, sir, I do, and yes I can quote you the regulations pertaining there-to. I'm not insane, sir, I'm ot out of my mind, I made the decisions consciously." Trip's tone was even when he replied, no venom, no recrimination, nothing particularly biting, he signaled that he understood why Jon had asked the question.

"I'm going to advise you right now that I will be issuing a report to command about this, at this juncture I would recommend you tell your XO you are temporarily relieved and your ship is to rejoin your task group." Archer said in a quiet even tone, trying not to draw the attention of the _Cutter's _CIC to the conversation he was having with _Tirpitz_'s CO.

"How long am I relieved for, sir?" Tucker inquired, some small measure of consternation in his voice, but sounding more like a chastised junior officer than the righteously indignant.

"Until you've rejoined the task group, we'll maintain this area and take on the survivors, we have relief craft inbound."

"Sir, I currently have damage control teams on the Kobayashi and Akira, I advise that we allow them to finish their tasks before we start, trying to trade out damage control teams in the middle is gonna create unnecessary down time while the issues get properly communicated between our crews and yours."

Archer understood the rationale, "Noted, remain on station until the critical issues have been dealt with."

"Un'erstood, if I may, sir, what constitutes a critical issue?" Trip inquired.

"I'll leave that to your discretion. After all, you're the best engineer probably in this immediate sector of space." Jon tried to joke, tried to keep it light hearted, but something in his voice was just profoundly unconvincing.

"Aye, sir, roger that."

* * *

><p>Through the high powered binoculars she could just make out the group of human infantry marching in what they called echelon formation across the biting sands of the Forge. She had been informed that their progress had been hampered by a sand-fire storm in the early morning hours that had blown in from the Viltan Flats late in the previous afternoon and over the night had turned into a sand storm and later sand-fire. When informed that they had issues navigating the storm she had almost allowed her shock to slip. They had attempted to walk through the storm, and as she could see now from tattered uniforms and equipment, they had borne the brunt of it.<p>

"How many casualties did they suffer?"

The Colonel just cocked a brow a second, his expression as dour and neutral as if he was actually Vulcan, "We won't be able to determine until they reach their extraction point."

"I do not see any apparently injured personnel, would they leave them behind?"

"No, ma'am, that's the whole platoon, if there's anybody injured they're walking out with the rest of the platoon." Colonel Bainebridge wasn't nearly as sociable as Colonel Shelby had been, and part of T'Pau wondered if this was not, perhaps, what they would be able to expect from now on. A man who viewed the stationing as an assignment unlock Shelby who had seemed to view it as a privilege.

"Should they not be offered relief or casualty extraction?"

Bainebridge lifted his own binoculars again, his jaw working slightly, seeming to accentuate the severe frown on his face, "If they're in a war they won't always be accorded the convenience of expedient extraction, minister."

"They are not currently _at_ war, Colonel Bainebridge."

The Colonel maintained his frown, not even looking in her direction, "Yet."

"Is that to imply they soon will, be, Colonel?"

"Who can say, but if it comes to it, I'm not going to let it be said they weren't prepared."

She pondered giving a comparative critique to how Colonel Shelby had command the garrison and its contingent but was overwhelmed by the sudden feeling of guilt the very thought of him or his name seemed to now elicit. When V'karra had left her position as nurse that had been several days of scrambling to located an appropriate replacement and during that time she had been forced, per her obligation, to monitor the former MCS officer herself. He had been highly agitated the first night, his demeanor seeming to indicate he knew precisely what was going on, and lacking the ability to communicate, the level of frustration grew even worse. Everywhere he went in the house there seemed to be a sense of palpable dread that followed him, a sort of cloud of anger and discontent that could almost be visibly seen. Late in the evening he had donned running clothes and in quick angry-seeming gestures had laced up a pair of running shoes before exiting the house.

She had not been sure what to do when three hours become four, then four five, and when he finally returned sometime after midnight he smelled of sweat and dirt, with a few scratches on his lower legs, hands, and forearms. He did not acknowledge her, simply removed the shoes, set them outside the door, then crossing to the laundry processing stations peeled off the socks and sweaty shirt, tossing both into the sonic washer and marched to the bathing room. He attempted no words, no interaction, no eye-contact; he clearly felt betrayed by her abandonment, and was reacting accordingly for an emotional being. If only he had been Vulcan there would have been ways she could explain it to him. If only he had been Vulcan he would have understood. If he'd only been Vulcan…she would have mated herself to him. But he was human, and he was broken, and he was angry and frustrated and probably couldn't understand how being alive was of any benefit to him.

After three days of his pointed indifference she had managed to find a caretaker, but only during the day and only four days of the standard week. This had forced more concessions from her in terms of monitoring him at least two of the remaining days with the expectation that he could self-govern for at least one. Her concerns were no longer so rooted in the idea that he couldn't care for himself as in the idea that if he were to find himself in a negative situation, he lacked the ability to communicate with the outside world for assistance.

This had culminated in the first huge mistake when she had attempted a meld with him. If he couldn't bring his thoughts out, she would go in and get them. She had not been prepared for what she found there; the recollection of the moment the mortar had hit played in his head over and over and over again. The way he had been conscious during the explosion, the way he had felt bones break, flesh burn, muscles snap, organs displace and herniate. He had remained conscious long enough to see the residual fires the plasma started eating at his arm and the hair on his head, his eyebrows, his eyelashes. What was surprising was that she experienced no pain, just a sudden and ineffable dread at what had been certain was the moment of his death. But even then, his concern had been, first and foremost, for the men of the garrison, for Vulcan as a whole.

She found other elements of what made him, him. Memories of growing up an orphan, memories of never really having anyone in his life that he let get to close to him except for a woman, once when he was a much younger man. She had betrayed that trust he gave her by declaring she couldn't wait for him to return from Vulcan when he had first been posted to the world. That, more than anything else, had closed him off to the world, the only other person he had really let in was a young NCO whom he served alongside. This man was James Reichauer, the man he had effectively sentenced to death as a blocking force against the Romulan when he had personally lead the team to extract the high command. In a way, T'Pau knew she was responsible for once again hurting this man for opening himself up again. But she sensed no anger there, what she did sense was his attraction, to her specifically. He tried to hide it, to shove it away from her mental prying, but there was no escaping the fingers mentally probing at him. No sooner had she fixated herself upon it, he pulled away.

That moment, that revelation should have been the singular factor that would have forced her to give up on the folly of keeping the human as a virtual pet, a secret shame to hide away.

That moment should have allowed her logic to take hold, for the Kholinar to exert itself.

That moment had been the moment where curiosity got the better of her.

She felt herself blush unbidden as she remembered what she had done, giving in to that curiosity, giving in to the emotions that were supposed to be purged from her. She slept with him.

In the dead of the night, after his hours of infuriated, confused calisthenics that had been an effort to keep as far away from her as possible as frustrated, betrayed, powerless tears ran down his face along with the sweat. The last secret he had, the last thing that was truly his was now laid bare before her and she knew he had to expect disdain and ridicule for it, she went to his room, disrobing herself then slipped under the sheets next to him. When his eyes opened and met hers, there was something there she couldn't place; foremost was the fact that he hadn't looked away, hadn't tried to avert his gaze, but there were layers there, things she thought she could identify but she wasn't certain. There was some confusion, perhaps even alarm, but tamped down in a way that made the surprise understated, and there almost seemed to be some anger. It was as if his eyes were speaking and she could almost hear their words.

_Why are you playing this game with me? Haven't you done enough?_

She placed a hand on his cheek, and nestled into his body, placing her head on the impressively large right bicep, and with that he seemed to accept her, his arm closing around her to rest his right hand on her shoulder. His was much warmer than she imagined, and it only took her moments for the calming effect of getting to touch him to lull her into sleep. It was strange, in retrospect, that she had been so comfortable in such an unfamiliar and intimidate situation with a man she, ostensibly, had always felt a strange underpinning of discomfort with. She realized now that she had, maybe always, been attracted to Wayne Shelby, and that latent attraction was always a subtle barb or thorn that prevented her from reaching the level of comfortable intimacy part of her always wanted.

Later, in the hours before dawn, they had both been roused, she by a nocturnal tumescence and he by her squirming to turn in his arms to face him. She didn't speak at all when his eyes opened, and his hold on her loosened, but she knew through some instinctual need what to do. Rolling onto her back she parted her legs as an unspoken permission and, almost to her surprise, he accepted the invitation and after a few minutes of preparing her through the use of his hands and fingers, entered. She didn't know how long it lasted, it didn't feel like long, or rather…not nearly long enough. Some logical portion of her brain tried to count the seconds, wondering when this inconvenient compulsion would be done and how to effectively resolve never to do it again. The ancient compulsions of her blood, of her sex, however stilled that part of her brain as she tried to experience every second of it to its fullest. There was power and confidence in his movements, his performance, despite the fact she could feel, sense, almost hear through the touch of her skin on his it was something he had not done in at least a decade, possibly more. The sensation of skin on and skin and flesh on flesh pushed Kholinar away, so that she could savor something she was certain now she had always wanted on some level, and while she was certain she did not reach the biological level of stimulation to produce the full extent of the involuntary sexual stimulation response, some bit of her soul seemed to finally be completed or healed by the act as she put lips to his body and face.

The next morning was awkward. Wayne…and she felt she could call him that now, rose, prepared a breakfast of Savas for two, and before eating, went outside to do some light calisthenics. For the rest of the day he was once again reserved, not wanting to look at her, but now anger was replaced with shame. Her own sense of shame at having given into such base desires turned the cloud over the house into a positive thunderhead. Still, some part of her was trying to rationalize why it was logical, why doing what she did was not in opposition to Kholinar, why she needed this intimacy as much as he did. So finally, she spoke to him, calling him by his given name, telling him it was acceptable, that what they had done was natural and there was no need to experience the illogical emotion of shame.

She almost had herself convinced of her own words when a day and a half later, having returned from her daily duties at the High Command she had taken him by the hand, led him to the bedroom and had sex with him again. Again, she rationalized, explained it all away to herself mentally, and Wayne's confusion had seemed to start to give away to elation. That night they had coupled twice more, once at her prompting, once at his, and for a moment she became convinced that he was the only logical pairing for her. Morning came, and the next day, and in her mind she could think of nothing but returning home in the early evening, to feel his body, to touch it, to gaze at the long limbs, the heavy, lean muscles, the scars, the tanned skin cooked to a ruddy pink that accentuated the difference of his red and hot human blood. The gray of his hair, the lines on his face, his eyes, those strong and sure fingers, the fine hair on his chest and arms and legs. When she returned to the house, she hadn't even gotten inside the door before she started pulling off her robes and undergarments, she didn't even make it to the bedroom before she mounted him and began pulling at his clothing. She didn't greet him with a word, or a gesture, or a touch beyond that that sought to divest him of clothing and to partake in his body. And hours later, when sleep had overtaken them both and she had awakened to realize that neither had eaten and that dawn was fast approaching she realized there was a problem.

She was not certain if it was pon farr, or just some illogical desire, but her hunger for him was growing so pronounced she was beginning to wonder at her ability to function properly, and thus she had not returned to the house the following day, or the day after, or the day after, nigh unto a week now as she found a second care giver to be there part of the night to ensure the colonel had assistance at least nineteen hours a day. She didn't know how she would face him again, now that doubt had clouded what she had been so certain of before. The question she wrestled with was which course of action had been the illogical one? Was it logical to given into her want for a human, the emotion she thought was supposed to be expunged by Kholinar? Then again, could it be argued that this was the course of logic; that Wayne Shelby was the logical mate for her, there was no denying that failing to attend to a biological need was illogical. To temper desires to learn discipline was one thing, but to deny them as a matter of course was unhealthy, counter-intuitive, and illogical in its own right. By the same token, it could be asked whether or not this was just a move of the passions, base emotionality; longing, lust, neither of which served a logical purpose, neither of which were part of Kholinar.

And while she attended to her own misgivings she allowed his to fester to a point that it became easier to simply _not_ face it either way. He was once again agitated according to the report of the care givers, he slept little, ate less, pushed himself into exercise and destroying things as an outlet for the unspoken rage and indignity and, likely, sadness, that she had abandoned him again. Without a word, without a touch, or a word of farewell, she had simply…gone, and left him wondering, as she was sure he was, If he had done something wrong, if it was his fault after all. Of course, now the question became which compulsion was right, which logic was the true logic, and, perhaps more importantly of all, would Wayne tolerate her episode of indecision and rumination while she came to the conclusion either way.

* * *

><p>Duras looked out for a moment over the mountains on the other side of the valley, from high up in the manor nestled in the high band of hills that sat on the opposite edge of the flood plain where eons of runoff from the Mountain range and glacial creep had washed away and eroded the siblings to the chain of foothills on which the manor rested. Qo'nos would always be home to him, but Ganalda held a charm he could not deny. Toral had purchased the aged manor from a minor house who served Lo'wahl and whose holdings had migrated closer to their palatial manor close to the planet's equatorial zone. From here, he was to administer the joint defense zone and his house's interests along the Ganalda run's trade corridor. The position as factor for his house's interests meant that Duras spent more time on Ganalda than in space, and while part of him longed to feel a ship under his feet again, he reflected that this time with Khersa had been more than beneficial. Though she was physically a woman, mentally she was still, in many ways, a girl…doted upon by mother and father and sheltered from the reality of Klingon life in this unusually staid, calm, and lovely backwater.<p>

She was an industrious young woman, not shying away from labor or work around the manor, converting the generations abandoned manse into a home worthy of a noble house. Her toil, never seemed particularly like toil, such was her elegance that even when planting in the gardens, taking down and cleaning the old tapestries, and meticulously cleaning the vast marble and stone of the old great hall she seemed like a delicately floating leaf. There was a rustic charm in her manner, the way of the ancient farm folk of their people, stolid but with grace, it was a quality that had been all but lost with the rise of warrior supremacy. There had been a time where the farmers had been the life blood of their people, a time when being able to feed the populace was of greater importance than any martial undertaking. Khersa's mother's side of the family still clung to this and it was clear in the women of the house of Lo'wahl that these roots would never be forgotten. They had a small staff that assisted her in her undertakings and helped maintain the rather modest manor, but she never let her position as the Lady of the house become a reason to shirk.

Duras looked back down to the stack of data pads arrayed on the table before him, he often chose to sit on the balcony while he reviewed the manifests from the ships coming and going down the corridor, assessing the material value of the goods, checking for inconsistencies in reporting, and assessing the taxes due the empire and the house of Lo'wahl for the privilege of utilizing their trade corridor. To a warrior, the idea sounded absurd, even repellent, but in addition to the goods, it was taxes that fed the fires of their industry…that pumped blood into the warrior class; warships could not be built for free, warriors could not be armed with wishes and aspirations. In all things, regimentation was a must, and this applied to trade as much as in war. Besides, Duras had experienced conflict, had tasted war, and he had decided that with the type of enemy they would likely face, he could live without experiencing that particular flavor of life…and death…again.

Khersa seemed to float up behind him, laying a mug of warnog before him, "You rose early, my love."

He took her hand in his, raising it to his mouth to place a gentle, affectionate bite at the heel of her palm, "Many ships have passed through recently, our trade with the qarDaSngan has flourished in these past months."

"Husband, would you not prefer to be captaining a ship to acting as a clerk?" There was no recrimination in her voice, she expected as much from him because it was all she had ever known.

"So eager to be rid of me?" Duras inquired, chuckling, "Thus the old man loses his young bride."

Khersa cuffed his head, eliciting a momentary alarmed squawk then more laughter from Duras, "Perhaps I wish to go on the ship too, p'tahk!"

She had moments where her mild temperament would fold, he wasn't sure how much of this was from her mother's side who was said to be the same way or how much of it was the result of having four brothers, but he found the sudden mercurial swings of mood to be amusing if not, sometimes, welcome. Once, when Khurd had visited, having arrived with muddy boots and failing to wipe them off before entering the house, she had pulled a bat'leth from the wall and chased him out the front door. The dichotomous nature occasionally came to a fore during moments of intimacy too as she had, on several occasions, gone from tender to aggressive while in bed.

She was quite eager in that regard, most nights a coupling would precede sleep and while they had both been virgins on their first night, they had managed to intuit a routine very quickly that satisfied both. He reflected at times it odd that he had not yet impregnated her, but viewed the situation as fortunate as he felt she was not yet prepared to become a mother and she seemed to indicate not desire to conceive yet either.

"There will be plenty of time for us to ride ships through the stars, but for now, we are helping establish a new bedrock for the empire, for our families, for our children. It is just as important I deal with these," He lifted one of the data devices from the stack, "as it is to be up there." He pointed towards the horizon where the stars and moon remained visible through the blue of the sky.

"Our children?" She inquired, the corner of her mouth cocked into a smirk.

"You do not think we can do as we do every night and not eventually have children, do you?"

She smiled at him, bearing her teeth, straight, white, and less jagged than most of their race, probably also a testament to her upbringing and family background. "We have skirted the odds so far, maybe we should start testing our luck during the daytime as well."

Duras guffawed, standing up and reaching around to pop her backside with a large hand, giving it a squeeze, "I have work I need to be doing."

"Can it wait?" She fired back.

Before he could speak the communicator on the table growled, Duras reached over and keyed it on, "This is Duras."

From the other end he heard the voice of his brother-in-law Dhe'bekt, "The humans have attacked and destroyed twelve ships, we are at war!"


	63. Future MCS Teaser

**[-AUTHOR'S NOTE-]**

**This is not part of the actual Infinite Diversities Story Arc, rather it is a teaser for an upcoming story set in the same universe as the Book One story arc in the late 24****th**** and early 25****th**** centuries. Without spoiling too much about the future development of ID Book One I will say that events will revolve around the result of contact between the Dominion and Borg and their eventual invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. **

**Since this section of is dedicated to **_**Enterprise**_** Stories I will not be uploading it here, however, as most of my readership will probably be from fans of the **_**Enterprise**_** Arc story, I'd like some input as to where you all think the best section to upload it would be: VOY, DS9, or TNG? Please comment on the chapter to voice your opinions and preferences and I will make a decision based on the plurality of opinions. Various main canon characters from VOY, TNG, and DS9 will end up figuring into the story, but it will focus mostly on the descendants of Trip and T'Pol.**

* * *

><p>"Hardball, hardball, come back over."<p>

He brought his hand up to the throat mic and made a low growling sound, hand still tight around the grip of his weapon. The troop of drones was less than fifty meters away, moving slowly through the heavy undergrowth. He had been sure they had been spotted during the drop, which was still a better situation to be in if they had attempted beam in and lit up every early warning system they had on the planet. Fifteen percent of the total land mass of the archipelago had already been processed and part of him was relatively convinced that the slow rate compared to the normal speed at which they stripped everything was because they were hunting.

The rumors they had generated regarding a research station on the world had been carefully crafted, right down to the pre-fabs and clearings they had dotted the area with. The attrition war this had become was unlike anything in the history of MCS, in the past the military response had always been tempered with an eye for the strategic, applying sudden, dreadful, asymmetric force at key points at key times to perpetuate a stalemate if not a nervous peace. The goal here was to force them to commit, to make the enemy bring a mass of forces to be picked apart methodically, to let the injury bleed and eventually become infected. This was the only methodology they had discovered to deal with the Dominion. Theirs seemed to be a tireless enemy, no matter how many you killed there would always be more. Of the Federation worlds, none had as ready a supply of soldiery, they had never stooped to vat growing cannon fodder, factory manufacture force projection. A man or woman was expected to grow through childhood and then, at adulthood, weigh the burden of duty internally. There were always those willing to commit themselves to a time of war, but the Klingon armistice ending over two hundred years of war had come just under five years ago and with it, it appeared as those peace would return to the alpha and beta quadrants. Men and women lay down their burdens and returned to their homes, leaving MCS understaffed by comparison to its historical high points in terms of personnel during the twenty third and early twenty fourth centuries.

He, of course, had been drawn to this life, the system eight augmentee genetics of his human side and the fire of the blood of Sokel drawing him to war. For three years it seemed as though it was all over with, the Cardassian Union and Breen Confederacy had lost the will to fight after sacrificing generations to the war against the Federation and specifically, humanity roughly fifty five years prior. The Klingons had stubbornly fought on for another fifty years before surrendering to the inevitable and signing an armistice to preserve what was left of their territory and culture and to stave off the predation of the Romulans who had begun opportunistic expansion into their territory in the late twenty third century.

The Tholians had been the first to go silent, the spotty and sporadic diplomatic contact suddenly stopping altogether without warning or reason. The Gorn had quickly fortified their borders and advised MCS to do the same, but at the time they had simply assumed that the Tholians whose temperaments were as inexplicable as their biology, were simply involving themselves in other concerns. It was until the Breen fell, scattering what was left of their population into Cardassian and Ferengi space that they realized something was wrong. By that time it was already too late as the hordes came pouring into the Alpha quadrant. The invasion force numbered easily in the tens of millions, driven by some unknowable motivation that made them immune to even the first attempts at diplomacy and made them fearless in the face of MCS's ability to make war upon them. When the _U.S.S. Rhyme of Spears _had engaged them two hundred parsecs spinward of Bajor, the cruiser and her escorts had destroyed thirty eight of their ships in eleven minutes but there had been no indication that the massive fleet was willing to retreat or even divert away from the task group. They had just plodded on inexorably, destroying all six ships in the process, leaving the site of the battle littered with the hulks of the ships and the dead before falling upon Bajor. From there they moved rimward towards Cardassia, securing the wide swathe of territory in between. In less than a year over nineteen billion were either dead or unaccounted for.

MCS had refused their line of advance, stopping them near the Bad Lands in a massive fleet action that cost MCS over a hundred ships and the enemy untold thousands. Still, the numbers continued to pour down through their corridor to Bajor, Ferenginar, and Cardassia and hundreds of other worlds in between. Legions of genetically identical, cybernetic enhanced soldiers and auxiliary client races formed the vanguard of the assault. Some estimates placed their numbers in the region of one hundred ninety million total combatants with untold numbers back from whence they came. Analysis seemed to indicate that this was not actually the result of a single faction but rather the combination of two wherein one became the superior, the technologies didn't flow together seamlessly, rather a fixed technology based seemed to have been augmented with some invasive nanotech.

"Hardball, be advised, Task Group: Line Drive is in position, enemy fleet action is two six mikes from line of departure, approaching at high warp."

The drone troops moved closer to the high altitude ionization resequencer, in the clearing; the device that was to serve as bait and also the trap itself. Sixteen teams were arrayed across the planet to act as harassment and interdiction as well as the trigger for the devices. They had been synthesized from Iconian technology and would prove to be too much of a curiosity for the invading forces to ignore. If they could provide a clue to the Iconian gate network, they would constitute a major strategic advantage for this Dominion, as they referred to themselves, but it was all a ruse. Closer analysis by their scientists would reveal their true purpose, but for these drones that had been trained to look only for curiosity without any regard to what they did, it was the perfect bait and the more they found the more urgency the Dominion felt about securing them. The fleet in question consisted of some fifty four capital ships and small craft and it was theorized that at least two of their larger command and control battleships were part of the group. The loss of those ships would set back their strategic standing in the area for weeks if not months. The trick, as it were, was to make this bait to tempting to ignore.

So they had to wait, wait until the fleet had arrived before they could move in to neutralize the drones, hoping that they wouldn't call for an artifact extraction that would require them to move too soon and scare off the fleet. He also had to hope that the single supervisor among them was not trained to recognize the true purpose of the device beyond its appearance as some sort of Iconian obelisk. Of course, there were plenty of ways to divert his attention, but in so doing they had to be certain not to tip their hand. Somehow, the Dominion command and control could detect and respond to the loss of even a single drone, the so called Jem'Hadar.

Twenty six minutes…how to draw this out for twenty six minutes?

Once the Dominion ships committed, they would be able to activate the resequencers and the pulse from the planet's ionosphere would degauss the warp propulsion system of everything within fifty thousand kilometers of the world, knocking their capability to jump away out entirely for just long enough for the _Ancient of Day's_ and her task group to fall upon the Dominion ships. They would be too involved in the firefight to attempt escape at that point, giving Admiral Janeway's expeditionary fleet the time to do what it did best; visit destruction upon the enemy. The battleship _Ancient of Days_, the heavy cruisers _Cup of Wrath_ and _Eight Banners_, the cruisers _Gungnir_, _Long Fang_, _Excalibur_, and _Tulwar_, the carrier _Sokel_, and the dozen smaller escort craft comprised a battle group that had a reputation as storied as it was bloody. Admiral Catherine Janeway was a fleet commander in the finest tradition of Terra's warrior navy past, her ships were hard chargers, her tactics brutal and efficient, her ability to inspire and command legendary; it was only natural that the Pi Canis Patrol Fleet under her command would spearhead this strike.

But in order for that to happen, he would have to ensure that the true nature of the trap was not known and the information not relayed to the enemy fleet inbound. Furthermore, he had to make sure that at least a bulk of the forces actually closed with the planet to be affected by the magnetic pulse. If a few of their smaller ships made it away to get reinforcements it would matter little. The main force would be gutted and any relief that came would just fall into the same kind of trap when they did arrive, feeding more kills to the huge MHAG rail-Guns of the gunships; the horrifying weapons that rendered two ton payloads of metal into streams of fluidic plasma traveling at more than two hundred fifty kilometers a second.

Wordlessly he gestured to the other members of his team who knew all the motions, all the tactics far too well. The Vorta that accompanied the Jem'Hadar on this sort of missions were well known to be jumpy, easy to startle, easy to misdirect, but with an almost clerically rigid schedule by which incidents were documented and reported upon. It was easy to spook one, to draw their attention away in the interest of security, but it was the sort of thing they would not immediately report or consider a potential security risk to the fleet action as a whole.

He watched as his men moved away, traversing the dense foliage with a sort of practiced ease that made the speed relative the noise produced starling. They would rustle a branch deliberately here and there, the sounds confusing; was it an animal, a bird, or was it something else?

It only took a few moments for the Vorta to pick up on the sounds and the occasional confused squawk of a native avian analogue in the trees. They troop stopped in its tracks, each beginning to scan the surrounding area with eyes that were not more machine than organ, designed to pick up on a number of spectrums well beyond what most organic eyes were ever meant too. The advantage that he and his men had in this situation was they it was known they had this ability, and their clothing had been designed to provide a litany of false information. Heat signatures were distorted to resemble anything but a humanoid biped, magnetic signatures were dampened by a layer of waveform reflective and dissipating paint. Right now they were doubtlessly seeing something that resembled a pack of large native reptiles similar to Terra's Varanus Komodoensis. A week before a specimen had attacked and killed a Vorta supervisor who wandered too close to one, without a Jem'Hadar escort. It had begun to feed by the time the drone soldiers arrived and it took several shots from their weapons to kill it. Since then several Jem'Hadar troops themselves were attacked by the creatures, but in these situations the native apex predators had not fared as well and the soldiers recovered quickly.

Twenty six minutes…

Twenty six minutes of playing cat and mouse, convincing them they were lizards in the jungle intent on eating them.

Twenty six minutes of trying to keep the level of concern hovering between inaction and action.

Twenty six minutes until they played their hand and prayed it wasn't forced before that.

What were twenty six minutes? What was that short allotment of time compared to fifteen months? Fifteen months since he grabbed his sea-bag and walked out the door telling his little boy that daddy would be home before too long. Fifteen months since he'd shut off in that uniquely Vulcan way when his wife had asked him why this was happening, why they couldn't just have peace now. Fifteen months; just like his forefather and his father, and his father down to Charles Tucker III who all had done this over and over again in the two hundred years of fighting the Klingons. Fifteen months since his own father told him how proud he was that he was taking the hard road, the warrior road that was as much ingrained in the ancient remnants of his Vulcan DNA from Sokel as it was literally what made up his human DNA. Fifteen months since his mother told her that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. But this didn't look like the easy win, and he damned his own genes that called him to this when he could just be at home, happy, content, and only subtly worried thinking "it's in the hands of the professionals, I can rest easy because this war isn't for me to fight" just like men had thought for millennia on worlds too many to even count.

_I want to win this, I want to win it now, I need to win this, I want to go home._

For Senior Chief Petty Officer Koln Stuart Tucker, twelve year Naval Special Warfare veteran, nine year JSSOG team leader, this war was personal; personal because it kept him away from the family he'd swore would be the center of his life ever since the Klingon Armistice was signed. So, he pulled the stock of his M881 Electro-Chemical Rail-Rifle tight into his shoulder and prepared to do what his duty required of him.

* * *

><p><strong>Please remember to comment to provide feedback for the decision making process of where this story will be put on <strong>


	64. Chapter 63

"Longbow, longbow, come back, over."

Trip lifted the receiver to his ear, "This is longbow actual, identify, over."

"Longbow, this is Black Light three five."

"Copy black light, send traffic."

"Longbow, be advised, you have hostile movers one point six klicks east north east of your position, moving to your position at approximately three kilo papa hotel, over."

"Solid copy Black Light. Interrogative, number of hostile movers? Over."

"Longbow, cannot confirm, appears to be large unit action. Over."

"Interrogative, large as in company or large as in battalion? Over."

Trip bolted upright in his bunk, the sweat already covering him as some sympathetic reaction to the memory of how hot it had been that day on Celes II at FOB Kodiak. The scars on his back and side ached and itched and for a moment he felt a ghost of the pain he had experienced when the bat'leth blade had struck his kidney, before his combat focus had taken over, before the rage had drowned out the pain and all the nerve perception in his body had moved into his hands and arms as he stripped the Klingon of the weapon, lifted him off the ground, slammed him into the dirt and mounted, left hand around the Klingon's throat while the right hand slammed over and over again into the face, feeling the bones of the maxilla process breaking into pieces under each blow until there was nothing left but warm wet pulp with sharp edges.

Somewhere in his mental process he had been aware of the lapse of time and it had reckoned that it had only taken roughly eighteen seconds from the time he was struck to the moment he rose from the corpse to pull his side-arm and engage a pair of Klingons rushing the mortar pit. By the time it was over an hour had elapsed and he'd lost a liter and a half of blood from his injuries, the Corpsmen had been stunned that he was still conscious much less upright directing recovery. It hadn't even been two weeks since the incident in the McKaskill Mountains and there he had been again in the middle of the same kind of terrible situation.

FOB Grizzly had been so far forward of COB Hanson that they'd pulled all the artillery two days before for fear of the base being overrun and the Klinks somehow figuring out how to turn the guns on FOBs Cobra, Delaware, and Growler. Paradoxically, rather than abandon the base entirely, they had left weapons company from 3rd Battalion 7th Marines while NSW would occasionally show up with a team and some support personnel just to disappear again up into the Red-Grass Plain and the foothills the Klinks seemed to love using to screen their movement from air and artillery. It was prime hunting territory, and after the debacle the Klingon main force had encountered in the McKaskills they seemed more than ready to move into the low-lands to continue the fighting. It was almost as if they still thought they could win, and it was made them that much more dangerous. They seemed to view each fight as the one that could turn the tide, so they threw themselves at it with almost suicidal blood-lust. And there was blood, plenty of it…mostly theirs. Three hundred kilometers south the Klinks had attempted a pincher attack on FOB Speight with three hundred warriors. Speight's maneuver elements were out on patrol so when they hit the base all that was left was two platoons of support personnel. It was, however, two platoons behind well-built fortifications with sixteen gun towers, multiple lines of gabions that funneled the forces that made it past the razor wire, the mortars, and the gun towers into kill zones as the roughly 100 POGs left on the base killed the Klingons to a man. As the maneuver element turned to make an immediate route back the base they had found and engaged the supporting element that had come to support the faltering assault. After nineteen hours of fighting, nine hundred seventy three Klingons lay dead, thirty four captured. They assault had floundered so hard against the base that when the 2 companies of Marines hit the Main Force, their flanks had been completely turned and the six hundred or so Klingons had been trapped between fire from Speight and the boys from 3/1st Marines had been killed to a man.

FOB Kodiak had not been built up nearly to the level Speight had been. A single line of HESCO bastions, likely the same ones that had been produced in the early 21st Century based on the wear he noted on the material, ringed Kodiak, no T-wall, a single trenched line in front of the HESCO added some height but little in the way of additional protection; there were no towers at all, a few bunkers that could operate as fighting positions, the CP and TOC were glorified bunkers in the middle of the base, the mortar pits had been dug, literally, days before when they put the weapons company in place to continue to strong-point the position. The only thing the base had that recommended it was a very well built communications shack built completely underground between the TOC and CP and it had, ironically, been resumed by the Marines for storage since there was no longer any personnel to communicate with forward observers to correct artillery fall for guns that were no longer there.

Final tally of how many Klingons hit the base was determined to be around two hundred thirty nine, which hardly had been enough to pose a serious threat even to the understrength weapons company, but it had been more than just a skirmish. What made the incident unique was how the Klingons had broken and retreated after sustaining only fifty one killed and just shy of five dozen injuries. Four of the Marines had been killed, twenty three injured in the fighting. He remembered the faces of the four kids just as indelibly as he could remember the names of Carter, Jefferies, Robinson, and Billick…the strange part was how the names and faces always got reversed. He couldn't remember what the men he had literally seen die beside looked like, but he could remember their body language, their way of talking, and just about every second of their last moments alive in this universe. The four kids from Weapons Company 3/7th Marines…he could remember their faces, their expressions, but that was all he could place; not their names, their voices, their characters or demeanors. How fickle the mind was, and at times it just helped him wonder how horrible a human being he actually was.

When they had heard the distress signal he hadn't thought about anything else but getting there and killing every Klingon that had attacked. He didn't think it was out of hate or some unrequited anger he had never been able to acquit himself of, it had just been the thing to do. It wasn't until Jon had reached him that he had a moment to think about what he'd done, how he had done it. He could have just as well have crippled every one of the Klingon ships, but his course of action, the course of action he had prescribed and his crew had embarked upon was to use the most asymmetrical response possible. To attack and respond with such unvarnished ferocity as to make sure that these Klinks, these ships, would never be able to attack a human ship again.

There was this compulsion, this draw that called him to combat, to fight, to kill…things he was almost certain he actually hated, if he actually liked it all, enjoyed it, why would he wake up in cold sweat remembering it? Why would he do whatever he could to get clear of it as an engineer? Did a man who enjoyed something dream about the traumatic events? Would they snap him awake, sweating, trembling, panicked?

It was at that moment he came to the terrible realization; yes…yes he would. He dreamed about war, combat, killing…the horror, the fear…the elation, the vividness. Trip Tucker made war because somewhere, some part of him loved war, loved fighting, not so much for the kill, for the death is caused, but for the triumph, the act of fighting itself, it was creation itself. But it's destruction, it's all death and destruction, that's what every academic said, what they always said in school, from the time he could walk to the Academy, they were still painting it as something negative, a net loss, something that should, ideally be avoided. It was almost like somewhere there was a disconnect between sentience and nature, like there were people that believed, in spite of everything of natural history and the history of the species that seemed to indicate that strife was the only way to advance, to evolve.

Evolution…

Evolve…

It was a drive that transcended anything he'd ever contemplated mentally, and right now he could see how his whole life was tailored to it. Mentally, physically, spiritually…evolve everything. The drive to become smarter, faster, harder, wiser…it had probably consumed most of his life if he looked at it objectively. Combat was just a facet of it, and in order to evolve that capability he had to fight, not just sit around and brainstorm.

He had to fight against anything that was trying to stop that process, anything that was trying to keep him from reaching the culmination of his training and genes. Bureaucracy, concepts of propriety, they didn't matter when it came to the battle for survival, they were impediments to their continued survival, to their continued evolution, and they should be swept aside just like the augments had done.

…Just like the augments…

The whole reason he was who he was, was because the augments had effectively tried to co-opt human progress, human evolution and make it their sole domain. That is why humanity had stopped them; why humanity had been forced to jump start their own evolution. He had to be better than that, that was what made him human, what set them apart from animals, what he was beginning to believe set them apart from many of the other species they had encountered. Humanity seemed singularly possessed of the ability to know what was in their best interests and do the exact opposite; not because it was fun, not because it was easier, but because, goddammit, it was right!

In undermining their own existence, humans forced themselves to become hardier, more clever, more dogged in their desire to continue on. It was, at times, hard to see in the people who had grown accustomed to the creature comforts that had served to set the standard of human life, but there were always just enough who were willing to eschew comfort, ease, and security in the unending drive to self-evolution.

It was time to talk to Lieutenant Commander Goodson…he was starting to think a head shrinking was, indeed, what he needed.

* * *

><p>Solan leaned against the crib, his hands wrapped around the wooden rails as he looked down at the sleeping shape, pink and light haired, with just the must subtle of points on the ears. Under the crib, Teeth had somehow managed to spirit his bulk , nestled there as a sort of jack-in-the-box made of fangs and fur and claws ready to pop out if something entered the room unexpectedly. He looked like he had been asleep when he walked in, but as soon as his foot had crossed the threshold into the room the head rose, eyes opening, and nostrils flaring. When the sehlat recognized it was him, it lowered is head, made a grumbling sound and closed the lids on his honey colored eyes again.<p>

He didn't hear his mother approach, but he sensed her draw close. To her credit, Teeth either hadn't heard her either, or, perhaps, just hadn't decided to respond as she was expected. She did not speak, but he felt her questioning in his mind, so he elected to speak first.

"Why does grammy hold Lizzy so much?"

He felt her eyes shift away without even turning his head to look at her, and a kind of weight, tight in the chest, squeezing at her throat, boiling in her stomach, something wrong but hidden. "Your sister was named in honor of your aunt, Elizabeth."

"Nobody ever talks about an aunt Lizabeth."

Her voice grew softer, "She died…many years before you were born."

"Is that why grammy cries when she says 'you're just like my lil Lizzy'?" Solan inquired, looking as his sister stirred a moment, turning her head from one side to the other.

"I believe that would likely be the primary reasoning."

Solan remained silent a moment, it was almost like he could feel mother anticipating his next question, but he decided to give voice anyway, "How did aunt 'lizabeth die?"

"Earth was attacked by a group of races called the Xindi, she was killed in the attack." T'Pol answered softly.

Solan turned his head, his cheeks flushed olive, brow furrowed and mouth drawn into a tight line, "Did dadda kill them?"

T'Pol almost recoiled from the question, she felt a little storm of anger, indignity, a thirst of vengeance swirling in his mind, something that almost touched the pure distilled wrath she had felt from the dark place in Trip's mind, and manifested in the Shadow Trip. The cyclone of outwardly directed anger and violence, scaled down and adjusting, likely, for age, experiences, and genes, it had to be the modified low-expressing MAOA reaction that marked the series 5 genes he had inherited from his father.

"Your father did engage in combat against some of them, yes."

"Did he kill them?" His voice was painfully flat, more so than when he had his moments of being acutely Vulcan, it was a sort of murderous intent that, fortunately, his body was incapable of carrying through on.

"Yes, he killed some of them. But that did not bring back his sister."

Solan's countenance remained firm, rigid, unyielding, "It kept them from killing anyone else's sister."

This was something they would have to face, something they would have to contend with from now on. It was clear to her that Solan had taken enough of the Series 5 genes from his father that he would probably find himself drawn to the bellicose world that had taken hold of Trip as a young man. It was easy to look at his martial pedigree and assume that Trip had been bred for war rather than just as the default reaction to the genes that had been combined to build his genetic code. At the time he signed hid commission, they had only performed a 1.6% code rewrite to express a few choice genes they believed would improve a number of areas involving physical performance. Solan had received roughly half his DNA from what was, for all intents and purposes, a killing machine; a brilliant, funny, kind and loving killing machine, but a killing machine none-the-less. The GRAs were designed to fight, defeat, and kill Augments, it just so happened that they were pretty effective against most everything else.

It was stark to look at it in such a light, to contemplate that Trip was more a device than a person if only by dint of the ordering of his creation and that of his progenitors. Weaponized people, weaponized genes, for all the efforts to make machines they still hadn't managed to eliminate that single fundamental element of giving them a soul. When she looked at Trip, she didn't see a device, a construct of flesh and bone, she saw her mate, the man whose arms she fell asleep in, who talked with and teased and argued, the mate who had given her two children.

Solan was destined to experience the same strange complexity, the dichotomy of man and machine as well as the dichotomy of human and Vulcan. The fire in his blood wasn't just from his human side, from the side that had taken aggression and turned it into a finely focused and honed tool, it was also the result of the ancient Sokelitte blood that was as much born to war as was the Tucker DNA that had been refined over generations to produce the apex of the fighting arts.

"Consider, that the Xindi also had families that would be distraught by their deaths and might, in turn, seek revenge for the loss of their kin." T'Pol spoke the rhetorical homily.

Solan looked at her with an expression of consternation, "Being right isn't always easy."

She cocked a brow at her child, more shocked at his wording than the concept of righteous violence it engendered. "Where did you hear that term?"

"Grampy told me."

"When did he tell you this?" T'Pol inquired softly, part of her was debating whether or not it might be time to begin limiting access to his grandparents, but at the same time, the statement held the weight of truth in it.

"I asked him why dada had to leave, why he couldn't stay with us, and grampy said that it was because it was the right thing to do, and being right isn't always easy."

There was truth in that statement, sometimes in order to do the right or correct thing it required action where inaction would be the standard and sometimes that action required supreme levels of involvement or sacrifice regarding an issue the individual had no further vested interest in. There was an ethos of this in the Tucker family if their last 100 years were an indicator, Trip's great great grandfather and great grandfather had both died having volunteered to fight in the Eugenics Wars, Trip's father had elected to serve in a capacity that had the potential to place him, and his family, in constant danger, and of course Trip's efforts spoke for themselves. Her own family wasn't immune to it either; her father had been killed in his role as Security Operative when she was still a young woman, her cousin on her father's side was clearly involved with Earth's clandestine services. She herself had been a field analyst whose original stated mandate had been to spy on humans in her role as Cultural Attaché.

None of those things had been easy, in most situation…and she deigned to exclude herself…it was the right thing to do. The needs of the many, the burden of service, dulce et decorum pro patria mori, to borrow the human term.

"Your grandfather makes a solid point, however, there are times when mercy and practicality-"

She didn't get to finish, the domestic communicator chimed an incoming call, there was something unnaturally piercing about the sound as it woke Elizabeth and caused Teeth to lift his head and growl in the direction of the communication device. T'Pol rushed to the next room, answering the device before the harsh tone could elicit cries from Elizabeth, as she reached to hit the activation key she saw the device registering the incoming call from Tucker, E. T'Pol snatch the ear piece and held it to her right ear normally she would issue the traditional salutation of "Tucker residence" but instead decided to identify Elaine directly. "Mother Tucker."

"T'Pol, sweetheart, have you been watching the news?"

T'Pol could hear the alarm in her voice, it was quite clear to her that Elaine was concerned, but she couldn't place her finger on the nature of the emotional disquiet. "No, I have not; I put Elizabeth down for a nap approximately fifty minutes ago and was attempting to keep the house quiet."

Elaine sighed, "It's bad, sweetheart, they're doing some kind of hit piece on Trip."

T'Pol found herself suddenly unable to maintain the proper level of emotional detachment, "What? Why?"

"Something happened on the Klingon border, the details are sketchy, they're talking about it now, go turn it on."

T'Pol nodded, more to herself than to Elaine who would not be able to see her, "Very well, I will return your call once I have seen it."

T'Pol was almost certain she knew what she would see. It would be another human separatist soapbox, a fifth columnist stab and undermining human progress with fear mongering and guilt culture. Trip already had made himself a prime target for having the gall to actually _love_ an alien without shame or self-recrimination. They had two children to show for it, and if asked T'Pol was more than willing to confirm at this point there were conceived by natural means and she had great affection for her husband and mate. The best method for undercutting the Terra Prime narrative was to confirm that there were non-humans that cared greatly for humans, some that would even go as far as to conform to the human definition of love. T'Pol could certainly assert and stand behind the statement that her life was richer for having been mated to a human than it would have been otherwise. While it ignored the fact that it was Trip _specifically_ that had been the enriching factor was secondary to defeating their narrative.

When she switched on the Vid screen she was already being greeted by a Terra Prime commercial decrying human "expansionism" and the "drive for empire in space" of which UEN and MCS was guilty if one were to believe the propaganda. It played heavily on guilt politics and the overwhelming self-destructive tendency in humans towards self-doubt and the mortifying drive to pursue the concept of guilt. Terra Prime was having an absolute field day. The revelation was only hours old, there had been no choice but to release the information as it involved a civilian freight company who was even now reporting the loss of the _Yuushin Maru_ with all hands and the deaths of crew members of the _Akira Maru_. It was all being wrapped up so neatly as another example of humanity's overreach costing the lives of other humans. And Trip was their new poster child for bad policy. As the commentary ran the notes of _I Dovergubbens Hall_ played in the background.

"Take Captain Charles A. Tucker the third, once a promising engineer who seemed primed to seek a prosperous career in the private sector following a short tenure in Military Command Starfleet's research and development division at Cape Canaveral."

On the screen they showed a picture of Trip just prior to High School graduation, likely from a yearbook photo. Short tenure? Nothing Trip had ever mentioned or indicated seemed to hint towards a desire to do anything but serve in MCS until she had become pregnant with their first child and he was prepared to resign to avoid being separated from them.

"In twenty one forty two, at just twenty one years old, Tucker received his commission from MCS where he began working in the Theoretical Applications lab at San Francisco, nine months later he was moved to the propulsion labs at Whiting Field Florida, working on the drive systems for MCS combat aircraft. Six months later in twenty one forty four he was at Canaveral, working on the new warp drive system for the current generation of MCS combat battle cruisers, the focus of his talents growing ever more militant."

Ah, the couched language of media reporting, using words designed to elicit an emotional response from the viewers. They were trying to build outrage.

"In twenty one forty five, Tucker was at Annapolis Maryland attending advanced assault combatives at the Naval War College and later that year at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Virginia. There he learned the deadly Marine Corps Martials Arts Program and excelled in the fighting style which is designed to maim and kill."

They were certainly laying it on thick now. The picture showed a serious faced Trip in woodland NWU trousers and black T-shirt standing between two instructors holding up the framed black belt.

"Later that year he went to the illusive and secretive Naval Special War Fighter…"

Another mistake meant to elicit a reaction.

"…Crane division in Indiana where he began course work that would lead him to Great Lakes Illinois, Coronado California, Joint Expeditionary Base East in Virginia, Panama City Beach Florida, and finally to Camp Lejeune North Carolina where he completed the vicious MARSOC training as part of his Naval Special War operator training."

There were a variety of pictures, each highlighting one of the areas he had attended. T'Pol immediately picked out several errors, the first of which was the image of the old naval yards at Portsmouth, Virginia showing, literal, cranes and the other accoutrement of Naval construction, aged and imposing. The image for Coronado was blatently incorrect, showing the arid terrain of Twenty Nine Palms, the image for Panama City Beach was easily over a hundred and twenty years old, showing Guantanamo Bay Cuba but without the mistake of showing an actual sign to indicate their deception. The image of Camp Lejeune was a generic image of Marine bayonet course training, meant to accentuate the aggressiveness of the training in the most agenda driving way possible. The next image was of Trip in full "battle rattle" in a rather candid shot from the forty seven war.

"Then, in twenty one forty seven, they sent the then twenty six year old Tucker to war for the first time. During the Celes Two incident…"

Incident, five hundred eighteen colonists were killed on the first day of the Klingon invasion, an additional one thousand three hundred ninety five were killed in the following week. By the time it was over the count in human lives was up to four thousand one hundred fifty six. It was not an "incident" it was a war, a quick, well executed, decisive war, but a war none-the-less. Trip would end up fighting on six worlds during what MCS and most of the UEN called the 47 War.

"…Tucker was one of the first soldiers to enter combat against an expeditionary group formed by six houses of the Klingon civilian authority."

T'Pol felt her face darken, felt livid blood pouring into her face as the heat of rage hit her. There was no formalized military in the Klingon Empire, the individual warrior houses contributed to the whole, mostly as part of their constant jockeying for power and influence. To call them civilians was to misrepresent the military autocracy that was the Klingon government. Most house leaders bandied about titles like Colonel, General, and other similarly martial appellations.

"While fighting against Klingon House personnel…"

Personnel? Personnel?! They were warriors, thugs, practically pirates who attacked without warning or provocation and were dealt with accordingly.

"…nominally as an engineer he participated in several major battles as a Naval Special Warfare agent…"

Poor wording again.

"…and as a fire base commander, getting his first taste of killing against Klingon forces."

Had they seriously just said that?

"But that wouldn't be his last taste of war. Despite having received multiple commendations for skill…"

A misrepresentation, they commendations had been for valor and actions above the call of duty.

"Tucker decided to stay in MCS, eventually securing a post as the Chief Engineer for the first warp seven heavy cruiser, the Enterprise. While aboard Enterprise he seemed to show a flagrant disregard for regulations, whether it was seducing alien princesses, making some rather inappropriate first contact with a species that resulted in him carrying an egg, or winding up married to a Vulcan, Tucker did it his way regardless of the consequences. The perennial provocation eventually culminated in the Xindi attack on earth."

Provocation? The Xindi had attacked, notably, _without_ provocation. Who was writing this?

"Forty thousand lives were lost, among them, Tucker's own sister in some unfortunate balancing of the equation."

What? What?! Did they actually possess the gall to imply that Elizabeth had died as the result of some metaphysical exchange for the lives Trip had taken? T'Pol felt her left lower eyelid flutter as a physical reaction to the rage building up inside.

"But this would only drive Tucker to more violence as evidenced of a report from the Expanse where he single handedly killed a Xindi assault squad with his bare hands. This wasn't the end of it though, remember Vulcan…?"

Images of the carnage of Shi'kahr began to show on the screen as the tempo of the Grieg piece picked up in pace and volume.

"The slaughter of the Romulan expeditionary groups outside Camp Kelly wasn't enough, Tucker returned to Earth four months later and began construction on the monstrous Iowa Class Battle Dreadnaughts, naming the first for the infamous Nazi warship Tirpitz."

Flagrant baiting and also untrue on a number of levels: first, Dreadnaught was not a ship class, but rather a delineation between design models of ocean going battleships, second, Trip hadn't decided on the name, the admiralty board had, and third, and likely most important, was the fact that the Romulans had been _attacking_ Camp Kelly when they were killed.

"He was then given command of the ship and used it to embark on a personal crusade against the Romulans, apparently he hadn't killed enough on Vulcan, and led a terror campaign against the Romulan home worlds that resulted in their official capitulation four months ago. But he still hadn't satisfied his craving for killing Klingons if the events of three days ago are any indication. He lead his battle destroyer…"

Battleship you incomparable cretinous bitch.

"To attack and destroy almost a dozen Klingon ships protecting their boarder from intrusion."

She had enough, she changed the channel before she could heave the remote at the vidscreen, slipping to the next channel in the media stream, and what else would they be talking about…?

It was a discussion show, known to be relatively moderate if slightly pro-MCS leaning, but they routinely booked guests that undermined their own message. The pro-MCS talking points guest was bumbling, failing to articulate effectively before launching into fusillades of barely coherent jingoism while the opponent, an obvious Terra Prime fifth columnist from Academia would simply shout the other man down with talking points. The host was the first to mention that the engagement occurred six light years outside any stretch of territory the Klingons even had a disputed claim to, meaning they had committed and outright act of aggression.

The Terra Prime plant replied with the assertion that parading materials meant for the production of a military combat base constituted an act of aggression, this had just elicited more meandering blubbering and jingoistic catechisms from the other guest and the host could do little to refute anything over the increasing loudness of the guests.

She flipped the channel again, the talking on the head on the next media station speaking in a droning tone with a graphic saying "Cold War Going Hot" with an image of the Klingon warship. "…pending recall by the armed forces oversight committee for the actions of June eighth. We cannot say at this time was disciplinary actions the officers will possibly face, but the armed forces oversight committee has only conducted four such inquiries in the seventy four year history of MCS."

T'Pol switched the vid viewer off and sat down on the couch, her head was spinning. Everything was so horrifically misrepresented, most of the arguments made from ignorance or, worse still, an absolute ignoring of facts. How could they be so stupid and wrong? How could they not see these wars were coming whether they wanted them or not?

* * *

><p>"We don't have a choice, we need to keep every ship we have sortie out there right where it is now!" Black howled.<p>

"We need to de-escalate this." Forrest barked back, "keeping the full compliment of warships _and_ the ship and captain responsible right there is waving a red flag in their faces."

Sanderson shook his head, "Bullshit, Max, they came thirty light years out of their territory to attack some freighters, it was clearly an attempt to bait us into a battle. _They_ were the aggressors, _they_ instigated. Robinson, Archer…Tucker…they all reacted judiciously, and frankly if we had a few more captains that were willing to commit asymmetrically like Tucker does, back in forty seven, we probably wouldn't be talking about this right now."

"A Black Flag command did what it was supposed to do; they painted the flags on the saucer and then offered no quarter. That's precisely why we started calling a command in hostile territory black flag, isn't it? For Christ sake, we named a cruiser Slit Throat when we sent it out there, we didn't do it to make friends and get on folks' good side." General Lester inquired before anything else could be said.

"I think this is the point where I should mention that Andoria committed four ships to provide support and security for K seven and the Vulcan have already sortied seven ships towards the same end." Gardner added, keeping his eyes caste down at the table and fingers laced together, "Gentleman, I think what we have to accept here is that this was bound to happen."

Forrest frowned, "What do you mean 'bound to happen'?"

"The Klingons were apt to attempt a belligerent stance again, it's been almost ten years since forty seven now, and in that time they've had enough cause to believe themselves the aggrieved party. Their politics have made it clear they feel as though they did nothing wrong, and with that kind of attitude it was only a matter of time before we were forced to go to war with them again." Gardner expounded, unlacing his finger and gesturing with palms up as he presented the point, the gesture almost a sort of shrug.

"And now Andoria and Vulcan are ready to throw their hat in the ring from our corner." Black added.

"Precisely, there was no bridge ever there to burn with the Klinks, but it looks like both Vulcan and the Andorians are working their hardest to build one towards us. In some way they either respect our actions or view them as an unfortunate necessity, but if we walk back our actions now, decry them, censure them, it's going to make us look inconsistent and unreliable." Sanderson picked up, eliciting nods from Lester and Black.

"I don't relish the idea of a war," Gardner replied, "I get to look at the figures every day, I get to see the name of every boy or girl we have to send home in a bag or box, but this was like trying to pretend cancer isn't there. The Klingons made zero attempts at diplomacy or reconciliation and based on that behavior set it was just counting down the days until they made a move on us."

Forrest spoke again slowly, with an impossibly precise edge to his voice, "What should we elect to do about the recall order for Tucker from the Defense Oversight committee?"

"We can sortie _Tirpitz_ back to Earth, and given the current alert status we won't be pulling any other ships from the area any time soon." Gardner declared.

Black tightened his right hand into a fist, "The politicians will just have to wait for their pound of flesh until we're satisfied the theatre is determined to be significantly secured."

"What kind of time table would we be looking at for that?" Forrest inquired, a sort of inscrutable scowl marring his face. At least part of him was certain about the answer.

"Probably the better part of six months." General Lester pre-empted.

Elections would be held in four months, as was invariably the case, this would divest at least a few of the individuals calling for Tucker's head from their seats in the UEN government. There seemed to be just enough ulterior motives to this to present questions to those who knew better and Forrest's face said that he knew as much. He started to open his mouth to say something but Sanderson fixed him with his characteristic glare.

"Max, I'm not a member of the Tucker fan-club like some of the folks here."

This elicited a small sound of protest from Black and a look of consternation from Lester, but he continued without dignifying either.

"But that boy has done everything we have ever asked of him with an aye-aye and an about face. He has devoted enough of his life and blood to MCS to be accorded some measure of consideration on our part." Sanderson spoke in a low even tone, face twisted into a scowl, "Our role here is not to serve up our sailors to the politicians for whatever agenda-of-the-day they're working on. We're supposed to advocate for our people, not acts as career facilitators for bureaucrats and elected officials. I'm not about to be the one who just sits back and lets him end up sacrificial lamb for bad policy."

"What bad policy would that be?" Forrest inquired, his expression still severe.

"The policy that didn't flatten half of Qo'nos in forty eight."

Gardner gave a half nod, "The amount of material and lives, for that matter, we've had to divvy up to the Klingon problem is almost criminal. If this had been an MCS policy they'd have had our heads on the block years ago. We've wasted too much time on a problem we could have resolved effectively nearly a decade ago by pushing past Khitomer."

"That would have cost a lot more lives than this policy has, Sam." Forrest replied with unvarnished candor.

"Yeah, it would have, more lives than we've lost so far…but these are just opening shots, the killing…and dying…hasn't even started yet." Gardner fired back.

Forrest glanced over to Black who was being uncharacteristically reserved right now. Max didn't have any particular animus towards Greg Black, he rather liked him, but Black was a warhawk through and through and any time there was a call for blood he'd be the first pounding his fists for MCS involvement in the tax of lives. Sanderson had a hawkish streak, as did Gardner at times, Lester…well it was a foregone conclusion with him. Still, it struck him as strange that the loudest, and often enough most eloquent, of the voices calling for Sturm und Drang was silent at the moment. Of course, he began to understand why. As a united front, the MCS admiralty and command could influence policy asymmetrically for UEN. There had been some who posited that the twelve members and five axillaries of the MCS chiefs of staff wielded more power than the entirety of the UEN and its component national governments combined. There was a measure of truth in this belief, but it ignored other factors; like the fact that the UEN held the purse strings for MCS and while MCS could choke off trade to Earth to effect policy in its favor, UEN could just as easily choke of funds to MCS to allow it to operate. In that way, the two existed in a strange limbo of mutually assured destruction that usually bred a strange kind of trust in their mutual-dependence. Of course, each side would occasionally require a sort of blood sacrifice from the other. Recently, MCS had demanded the toll be paid of the UEN in the form of the aggressive upgrade and replacement program they had embarked upon. Greg had, interestingly enough, made the case for this and won hearty support from UEN and the component nations to build a new grand Terran fleet less than a decade after many of the ships that comprised the fleet had entered service.

"You think that war is unavoidable?" Forrest asked.

"Yes." Gardner fired back, offering nothing else.

"The problem is that the Klingons will view any concession on our part as a sign of weakness and use it as pretext to attack." Black spoke up, snatching the attention back to his end of the table. "We are between the proverbial rock and a hard place, gentleman. If we give ground…they attack, if we hold fast, they attack. The concern we have before us now is what route will maximize our control of the situation and minimize damage to our interests and those of our friends and neighbors."

"Do we even have friends? Are they our neighbors or are they just another demographic we have to provide tacit security for and against? What are we really?" Forrest asked, the bitterness positively dripping from his voice.

"We're a mechanism of policy, Max…" Gardner replied, "We're a device that allows either the better or baser nature of humanity to prevail on the galaxy. All we can do is do our best as long as we still feel we're doing right and walk away from it once we can't. MCS may not have friends or neighbors…but we're not the plurality of humanity and we're only an organ of its policy as long as we're permitted to be. So, if you ask me if we have friends….we…humans, who live on Earth or were born of Earth…then yes, I'd say we do."

Black slammed his opened hand on the desk, a big grin on his face, darting his head back and forth to look at the other members of the board, "Holy shit, Sam! When are you planning on announcing the run for office?"

Sanderson and Lester chuckled in response while Gardner's face got even more Gardner-ish. Through the deepened scowl the pudgier officer looked at Black, the ill-temper on his face betrayed only by the spark of amusement in his eyes, "Whenever you quit so you can be campaign manager."

Sanderson sat for a moment for the table to quiet itself then looked around the table, "Well, on a side note, I think we were able to adequately demonstrate the capabilities of the Iowa class in less than ideal circumstances. The appropriations committee has already approved an extra three boats in block three and proposes moving one of the block three boats to late block two."

"Cute…" Black quipped, his expression growing sour, "Let's behead the guy who designed and demonstrated the capabilities of the boat, but tout his design."

"And that…in a nutshell…is politics." Gardner declared with unvarnished ire.

* * *

><p>T'Pol sat with hands folded, the rage slowly simmering somewhere deep in her mind; an ancient fire born of war and the Viltan Flats; the old blood of Sokel that seemed to cool and lie dormant for some years only to be revived when the old lines of the Sokelite warrior houses and soldier vassals were pulled back, inexorably, to the womb that birthed them. More times than she could comprehend she saw, in the records, the old family genealogies, that the pull of Sokel's get pulled the distaff clans and the decedents of his warriors back to mate with the clan, something all but a few of them were forbidden from doing when Sokel still ruled. It was almost a kind of reactionary violence, as it had been so long ago, a seething coal that did not seek fuel for a fire but once so presented sparked readily. So it was now, the indignation at the way her mate had been treated had spiked almost a week ago after the fourth day of reporting and demonization had pushed her past her ability to ignore it anymore. When they had begun categorizing Trip's military record as serial murder she had experienced enough. She hadn't spoken with his parents, she had spoken with the Vulcan Embassy or one of the numerous consulates, she hadn't consulted Admiral Black or any of the intelligence handlers; she just resolved herself to act.<p>

The door opened, "Miss T'Pol, you'll be on in five minutes."

Someone had to set the record straight, and while she could hardly be seen as objective given her history and relationships, she had banked on the fact that the media seemed deathly afraid of impugning an alien even if they steadfastly opposed the ideas being put forth. They may attempt to challenge her assertions, but she was reasonably certain she would be able to out-debate all but the most storied talking heads these programs relied upon to provide them with opinions and points of view. It was her turn to strike a blow against the unanswered accusations and vitriol, and she intended to do so with every iota of her ability.

After a moment she rose from the seat in the so-called Green Room, a name that seemed erroneous as the room was painted in shades of beige with matching furniture, and stepped to the door which swished open for her. A production assistant, a young man of around twenty approached, his mannerism and body language awkward and gangly, as if he was not comfortable in his own flesh and unaccustomed to its workings. She juxtaposed it with what she knew of Trip, of what she had heard of his youth. Her mate had possessed mastery of his body from a young age, master of his mind at almost the same time. Meanwhile there was this individual, a representative of the organization and entity that had sought to slander her mate, he was the enemy.

"Was there anything you needed Miss T'Pol, water, coffee?" He stumbled over his own words.

"I require nothing in addition to that which I have already been provided. Furthermore, to consume a beverage during the proposed series of dialogues would constitute a slight on the speaker, I will not entertain such behavior." She replied.

She continued at a brisk pace until she reached the sound-stage, a raised make-shift room with furniture and staging meant to make the area look fashionable and inviting, but marked by impermanence, like the set of a play. The hosts and their guests were arrayed in the seats, looking not so much like humans as painted veneers; fake, artificial, wrong. The male host, orange like some dried persimmon and smiling looked to the camera, "We've got a rare treat for everyone today."

The female host went from looking at her co-host back to the camera, wearing the same fake smile and skin that looked like layered paint seeking to hide rusted metal or damaged wood underneath, "That's right, Todd…T'Pol of Vulcan is here to discuss the astro-poltical ramifications of MCS aggression in the past two decades and what their continued existence could mean for Earth."

T'Pol fought back the inexplicable urge to gag.

The audience applauded, as if on cue…as if doing so would allow additional dopamine to be released into their brains like experimentation animals. The light back stage where she stood flashed green.

"You're on."

She walked across the set to the stage area, stepping up to the chairs while the audience clapped. She sat at the logical chair as the male host gestured towards it with an open hand. She sat herself and crossed her legs, she had opted for trousers and a blouse as opposed to more traditional Vulcan garb since she never wore traditional robes anymore and she found casual attire more appealing.

"Miss T'Pol…" The male host said.

"Now, would you prefer to be called miss T'Pol or…" the female prompted in some archaic stab of human gender politics.

"If honorific appellations are required I would be preferred to be referred to as misses Tucker as that is the legal name by which I am known on this planet." She fired back succinctly as the two hosts looked back at one another, some expression on their face seeming to indicate they had just know realized the mistake they had made in inviting her to the show.

"Oh, that's right, you married a human." The female host declared.

"And our audience might be interested to know she is the mother of the first half-Vulcan child born on Earth." The male added, as if prompting audience reaction.

There were a few claps, but they subsided quickly.

"How is your son?" The female co-host inquired, trying to give the illusion of friendly engagement.

"He is mostly engaged with interacting with his infant sister." She replied succinctly.

"Oh…" The female replied, unsure where else to go from there.

"Now…is his sister half…" One of the guests, a known Terra Prime rabble rouser who worked under the guise of political analyst inquired.

"Human…?" T'Pol finished, "Yes, she is a human-Vulcan gene stable hybrid, phenotypically she inherited more human traits and takes after her father's side of the family."

"Wow…and she's how old now?" It was the female again.

"Fifty six days."

"Wow! Fifty six days, you had her fifty six days ago and you look that good? Where can I buy what you use!"

There were forced laughs from the hosts and confused echoing from the audience.

"Now, you'll have to forgive me…but who is the father?" The male host inquired.

"The father…my husband…is Captain Charles Anthony Tucker the third, the same individual that has been so reprehensibly pilloried in the media for the last two weeks."

And with that the air seemed to rush out of the room with a few muted gasps from the audience.

* * *

><p>"It's an issue with our equations."<p>

Tucker narrowed his eyes at Kelby, arms folded across his chest, preparing to make his new chief engineer to defend his assertion like any good captain did of any good Engineering division chief. "Whatcha mean?"

"The dumbasses that came up with this firmware standard wanted everything to be parabolic, but we should be working with logistic growth." Kelby asserted.

Tucker arched his brows, "You know I did the programming for a lot of that firmware, right?"

"Yeah…dumbass." Kelby fired back.

Trip tried to hold his face even, but failed…hard, the grin creased his face as he dropped his head and chuckled, "Okay, you got me…."

"What we've been doing at this point is just trying to tweek the parabola right, but in reality, if we work on the new approach we'll just follow a new terminating curve. With the model we've been using we could conceivably keep moving faster but at diminishing returns for fuel consumption and energy loss, that's the issue we initially were looking at with eight one, we skirted that at nine one because you've got such a big power plant here, but you were still sucking down reaction mass at one hundred twenty three point six five five percent of optimal. I think I've got a solution though that'll give us stable niner five at one hundred percent of relative reaction mass consumption."

Tucker nodded, "Like you did with En'erprise?"

"Better…you scratch built this to be a research lab whether you planned it or not, Trip. On Enterprise we were just revising and re-writing the edition, on Tirpitz we can write a new book." Kelby smirked mischievously.

"So…what's the course of action…already have the new firmware written and ready to plug?"

Kelby lifted a static-proofed bag with a set of hot-swap chips inside, "Ready to go."

"Prep window?"

"Already done; thirty seconds down-time to do the swap with built-in fail-over to our original equation sets in case it doesn't work."

"What'll our engine status be during down-time and immediately following." Trip inquired, the engineer in him asking questions a Captain usually didn't have a full grasp of.

"Thirty five percent power reduction during the switch over phase, fail over has a point zero zero five second delay if the power plant rejects the new check-sums."

Tucker cocked a brow at his former number two, "Won't even drop out of warp?"

"No sir, unless we have a hard fault and scram before the fail-over hits." Kelby replied, a glint in his eyes that indicated his pride in having done the due-diligence to such a high level of completion.

"With that short a time window the odds of that happenin' are around one tenth of one percent." Tucker mused.

"I know."

Trip was just about to speak when he heard the 1MC chime, "CO, please report to your ready room for emergency flash traffic, CO please report to your ready room for emergency flash traffic, that is all."

Trip grimaced, "Crap, what now?"

"Should I hold off on this, sir?" Kelby inquired, pretty sure he knew the answer but wanting clarification just in case.

"Roger that, don't proceed yet, in case we have to make a high-speed run I want the reactor full the second we make rotations, copy?"

"Aye, sir."

Trip turned and began jogging down the corridor until he reached a ladder access point and began climbing towards A deck. In his mind he was already mentally debating what this was about; another Klingon incursion, some other issue pertaining to immediate galactic stability, JSSCOG tasking…he seriously hoped this wasn't the case, or could it be that they had finally decided how they were going to offer his head to the folks screaming for it at UEN? He knew he'd be able to keep his head above the water even after it had been bureaucratically lopped off, regardless. Manufactured scandals like this never resulted in actual time behind bars, it was all discharge and forfeiture that would not stop him from doing much of anything else except seek political office.

He'd received word around a month back that Vulcan was planning its first orbital fleet yard, the idea being they would court production contracts and the related subsidies from UEN at a discounted rate, this was likely being done to solidify their status as an ally and to begin improving their own production infrastructure which had never been taxed in such a fashion in recent memory. He was certain it would take little more than putting in a resume to land a job there. Living a few years on Vulcan might do them all some good, Solan needed to see where T'Pol's people came from and at least part of him was sure their life would serve to be quieter among a people who allowed their inquisitiveness to be tempered by concepts of propriety.

As long as he could keep looking forward he was certain that he could get through it, even if the idea of leaving MCS terrified him on some level. He should have felt a knot in his stomach, the cold shaking feeling of panic at what he expected to hear, but at the moment he wasn't experiencing the first twinge of dread. When he finished the ascent and entered the area outside the CIC he was quickly admitted by the Fleet Marines and upon stepping inside the Control Center was immediately met by the eyes of Nassir.

"P-Keck." The Iraqi officer declared as Trip walked along the perimeter of the oval shaped room.

"Roger that."

Trip didn't pause, just marched towards his office, hitting the entry key without a pause.

_Get it over with. Get it over with._

On the desk the monitor of his personal console was flashing the rectangular "incoming communication" icon with the abbreviation PQECC in the bottom left corner. Trip hit the receive icon before he sat and the screen flashed in an image of Admiral Sanderson behind his desk at HQ San Francisco.

"Captain Tucker."

"Admiral Sanderson, sir."

"Take a seat son, we have something to discuss."

_Oh boy, here it comes._

Trip complied and once he was in place Sanderson laced his fingers together, "This is about the Kobayashi Maru incident."

"They figured out what kind of platter my head is goin' on?" It wasn't something to joke about, but at the very least if he was willing to lighten the mood it would make things easier to discuss.

"Still no word on that yet."

This presented another option, one Trip hadn't considered but that suddenly seemed very practical for MCS, "If I need to tender my resignation, I will do so, sir."

"It's not that either." Sanderson sighed, "Give me a no bullshit answer…how much of this have you discussed with your wife?"

Trip furrowed his brow, unprepared for the question as he was, "What? None of it, sir."

"No message home, no conversation mentioning it in passing?" Sanderson arched a brow, a slight hint of a knowing smirk on his face, as if he'd seen this all before; a sailor saying just a little too much or saying way too much and forgetting.

"I haven't spoken to my wife or anybody Earth side since four days before it happened, admiral." Trip paused, "Respectfully sir, couldn't you have check this Fleet Comm-C?"

Sanderson's expression took on a look of wry irritation, "Fleet Communication Command got placed under jisscog earlier this month, we can request records but the turnaround time on documentation is sitting upwards of two weeks even for the simple stuff."

Trip furrowed his brow again, "How the hell do they expect anything to get done?"

"We have jisscog liaisons at every level to facilitate the process, but for an actual transcript they have to pull records and send us jumping through the requisite number of hoops to make everything sufficiently bureaucratic and immune to the appearance of efficiency."

Trip nodded, saying nothing else, leaving a palpable silence as Sanderson began to consider what else needed to be mentioned in the conversation, Trip opted to pre-empt the situation and provide an additional out for the Admiral, "If I may, sir, what brought this up?"

Sanderson sighed heavily, bringing a hand up to rub his forehead, "Can I get you to promise you're not going to chew anyone out over this now that we have this information?"

"That's gonna depend on whether what you're about to tell me is gonna effect the strategic security of MCS." Trip felt an involuntary chill go through him as he began to ponder what had happened, what had happened to T'Pol and Solan, or what they had done.

"It's not bad…" Sanderson declared, his expression sheepish, "As a matter of fact it's probably good for us in the big scheme, it's just got a few internal questions going on that we need to clear up."

"Okay, what is it, sir?"

Sanderson sighed again, his third time since the conversation began and it was beginning to make Trip wonder what was really going on. "Let me say first, there was a lot of bad press…hit pieces that made you the target, Tucker. They turned what happened to the Klink assholes into an atrocity and they were painting you with the same brush as Noonian Singh."

Trip felt himself pale, "She didn't attack anyone did she?"

"Huh?"

"Vulcans are very defensive of their mates." Tucker clarified, "If T'Pol thought or perceived I was under attack she might…go off."

Sanderson actually smirked, or rather grinned with equal parts amusement and wry mirth, "No, no, no, nothing at all like that…well, at least not with fists or anything, she did dole out a tongue lashing though."

Trip groaned, leaning back in the chair, bringing a hand up to her eyes, "Who…Forrest? Black? The UEN general assembly? How fucked am I precisely?"

Sanderson laughed hard, his face reddening, "Nothing like that either! She went onto the morning media circuit."

Trip brought his other hand up to cover his face. "Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff-uck!"

Sanderson laughed again, long and hard, his face getting redder and tears forming in the corners of his eyes, "Oh they're mad as hell in the oversight committee, screaming mad, they've been bending Forrest's ear on this for days…but recruitment is up thirty percent and we got six budget addendums pushed. It's a net win for us, but it has hurt some of the political opinion."

"I don't think I'm qualified nor should I need to tell you how that's bad for us, sir." Trip declared.

"We have to weather this shit every time someone pulls a trigger, Tucker, it goes with the territory, but what would have people been saying if the Kobayashi and Akira were lost with all hands too? Hell, the fact you were quick enough to snatch two of the survivors from the Yuushin is still getting talked about in some circles."

"I don't follow there, sir." Trip looked back at the screen.

"You dropped your shields while taking fire to beam aboard two people in deep space conditions. If you had hesitated three more seconds the likelihood they would have survived would have been single percentage points. That took unbelievable balls and confidence in your ship and crew." Sanderson explained, "You're not going to find anyone above the rank of E-1 in MCS right now that's not going to call you the ballsiest sonuvabitch in the quadrant."

"Jonathan Archer?"

Sanderson frowned, "Christ, you're sore at him?"

"No, sir! But he seems to be sore at me."

Sanderson cocked his head to the side, "Tucker…he did what the rank dictated, he wasn't angry with you."

"He sure didn't seem too happy with me when I started poppin' those hulks."

"That was a regulations issue, you know we _don't_ fire on crippled enemy craft as part of a standard fleet and flotilla action." Sanderson declared, his voice hitching in a way that indicated there was subtext there.

"So I should have done it before the Slade Cutter jumped out, huh?"

Sanderson tapped the side of his nose twice with his index finger.

"Well shit, I'd better work on my timin', if I'm not relegated to a supply clerk management position or sent to the brig for the rest'a my adult life."

Sanderson crossed his arms and leaned back in his own chair, "I don't think there's going to be too much made of it, Tucker. There'll still be an inquiry but after the elections they lost a few of the opposition committee chairmen and committee re-composition moved a few more out. The chairman slot is still in the hands of Terra Prime, but she lost a big head of steam that's needed for these kind of witch hunts. They're probably still going to make you toe-the-line on this one, but the chance of their being a decision against you that's anything more than a moderately worded reprimand in your records is looking pretty slim."

"If there's one thing I've learned, sir, it's never count on a sure thing." Tucker replied, his expression skeptical.

"Huh?"

"If I had counted on the sure thing I'd have never ended up married to a Vulcan with two kids, sir."

Sanderson chuckled, "Okay, fair point."

"Was there anything else, sir?"

"Nothing official, from a personal perspective, I have to say I fully support your actions, the only thing those Klink bastards understand is force, you used the proper application of force from the psychological point of view…we're probably going to end up at war with them either way, at least now they have some things to give pause to in terms of their ability to project power."

"Thank you, sir." Trip replied.

Sanderson leaned forward in the chair, straightening himself in the camera, "You're likely to receive other calls about this matter, just give them the exact same answers regarding the timeline until the records have been made available and we'll let them bare out of the facts."

"Aye aye, sir, understood."

Sanderson nodded, "Carry on Tucker, keep a sharp eye and be proactive, until we're told otherwise, the Klingons are the enemy and are to be treated as such."

"You don't need to tell me twice, sir, I never forgot."

"Sanderson out."

The screen flashed to the Military Command Starfleet Command Headquarters San Francisco crest as the feed ended. T'Pol, what did you do? He smiled to himself, the thought of his Vulcan woman laying into media talking heads to defend him brought a swell of pride he felt welling up from his stomach. Maybe he should give her a call now, discuss the matter. He would have to give her some mild chastisement…but then he would praise her, because it was so perfectly Tucker in behavior and represented the family exactly the way it should. He was also finding himself incredibly turned on at the idea of the waifish Vulcan talking down to media ideologues with that unique combination of logic and condescending insistence that were hallmarks of her race. Maybe, if he called late enough and Solan was already in bed, they could discuss some other issues of a more adult nature as well.


End file.
